Canada - Eala lights up Toronto as men drop like flies

34:46But then Norrie twice gets broken from 40 love up in that first set. And Dimonor comes up with some incredible shot making down the stretch in the first set, wins the opener and then takes this 5-2 lead in the second set. And frankly, I am at that stage getting ready for bed. I'm like, this is over. I'm going to go and brush my teeth. I'm going to keep the telly on. But I am ready as soon as this finishes to turn the telly off, get to sleep. Hang on, what's your new flat layout? We've not been invited round, David, so we don't know. Can you see your big telly from your bathroom? I can see my big telly from most places, yeah.

35:28Not from the bathroom, but, you know, the noise feeds through. Right, yes. It's a good set-up. But he double faults on Match Point, De Manor, and that's immediately a warning sign, isn't it, of sort of, he's tense. And against Norrie, you know Norrie's not going to go away and he keeps the pressure on and he serves for it again, Dimonor at 5-4. Norrie plays quite a nice game, but Dimonor gets broken. But then Dimonor does manage to take it to a tie break. He holds to take it to a tie break. And I'm thinking, okay, he's got over the little choke that he's just had. He's now in a tie break, takes a lead in the tie break and then he loses that lead and suddenly loses the set and all of his momentum's gone and he loses the third very, very quickly.

36:19Again, with a lot of badly timed double faults on break points. He'd be double faulted to go down a break. He'd be double faulted to go down a double break. And it was just the picture of a man who is just severely lacking confidence, I think, at the moment and the ability to tough through matches, which has always been one of his great attributes. There's a lot of self-doubt, I think, in there right now. And the opportunities are there for him and he can't grasp them. And I think it's all snowballing and making it worse in his mind. Yeah, really, really tough loss for De Menor. Because I agree with you.

37:00I think this tournament was well set up for him, actually, to really have a run. Rafael Hodder the wall that we're all expecting him to hit isn't here yet he was really impressive last night straight sets over Lorenzo Mazzetti Matt yeah second week in a row that he's beaten Mazzetti he needed three sets in Washington he's done it in straight sets here and look very tight first set Mazzetti has break point at 4-3 and then loses 11 points in a row. And Tennis TV clipped up that little section of the match and described it as a generational lock-in from Hodder, which I think might have been bait because you then watch the points and it's basically just the unforced error fest from Lorenzo Mazzetti.

37:59It's just Mazzetti on a hard court. Hodder doesn't do a huge amount of locking in, I wouldn't have said. Generational. But, you know, he knuckled down. He didn't make errors. He came with a lot of good energy in those moments, whereas Mazzetti's energy was... No one's clicking on a knuckling down, Matt. No, I guess not. I felt great. I don't know about Djokovic's thinking. Generational knuckling down from Raphael Hodder. Click. Yeah. I was like, okay. but I suppose it was indicative of a guy like Hodder who at the moment is like the anti-Demenoir isn't he he's full of confidence he's winning a lot of matches even when he's not necessarily playing his best he's coming through tough moments and that all builds confidence whereas Mazzetti doesn't have any of that at the moment and is searching again and I just have this sense that Mazzetti, every time something goes a little bit wrong on court, he's almost thinking, oh, well, I had it all going on in Australia and then I got injured.

39:09You know, it almost feels like he's still not over that mentally. He's bringing that still to the match court, which is understandable. He was playing brilliantly when his career got disrupted like that. But it's just a process of trying to get it back. And you see it in those moments where he has an opportunity and can't take it. he suddenly gets very, very frustrated and down on himself. And he sort of let that first set run away from him. And then that energy continued in the second set and Hodder built a 4-1 lead. And then it became a bit of a match again. And Muzzetti was suddenly back and the shot making was back and he recovered one of the breaks.

39:47And maybe he could have pushed it. But Hodder was good. Hodder was really good in this one. He was more explosive than I'd seen him recently, taking charge, hitting his backhand down the line very well to expose Mazzetti, who wants to stand in his backhand corner. He leaves quite a lot of space up the line, and Hodder took advantage of that. He was dangerous on return, looking to harm on all the returns that he's hitting. That's the Hodder that I think we first saw and want to see. He did have a bit of that going on last night against Mazzetti. It's another big opportunity for him in this tournament as well.

40:24you know like he's the one right now with the with the confidence it's just I do still think he's hanging on a little bit physically based on all the matches he's played so that's going to be interesting to watch is Hodder the favorite for the title from here

40:44it's a very good question David?

40:52Or either of you, somebody say something It's Hodder's problem is he's actually landed in the section that is still a little bit tough he's got the Hetschka and then he's got the winner of Feast Norrie like there's actually a lot of good players still left in that little section who's your pick who's your pick from here

41:22I don't have a pick do you think it could could be somebody really random isn't Jakob Minchik or Ben Shelton maybe the favourite at this point I would probably put one of those guys yeah Tommy Paul Leonard Tien they're all and they're playing each other, Paul and Tien. Fonseca. Fonseca plays Rude, I think. Yeah, he does. Fonseca looked good against Sitsapass. Yeah. I'd probably go with one of those. I mean, Shelton won it last year, didn't he? I'd probably go Minsk, actually, the way he's playing at the moment. Matt, your pick.

42:09Who, is there anyone in the door? Is there anyone in the draw? Is everybody in the mix? Who's not in the mix? Lots of people are, certainly.

42:21Okay, I'm probably... Zizu Berg's. Yeah. Borges. Borges in the mix. He's had a nice run. He's won three matches, but I'd be surprised if he won the title. Is Rindeknesh in the mix? Of course he is. He's always in. Rindeknesh. Darderi. Marida's not in the mix. Is Darderi in the mix, David? No. Cam Norrie. But there are several that are. Probably, yeah. Yeah, Norrie's in the mix. So, Berg's isn't... Terran Zatman.

42:58I'd be surprised if he won it, yeah. Hubert Hurkacz. Bertic? My guy Bertic? You tell me. Yeah. It would be spectacularly random, wouldn't it? Yeah, but he's the guy that does the surprising things. But he always gets to a point where he loses. Yeah, no, he will lose. Bertic will lose. Thiago Augustin-Tarrante, not in the mix. Popperin, former champion, in the mix. Alex Mickelson. These are questions, folks. Please answer. Yeah, but... Mickelson in the mix. What do you think?

43:43I think Alex Johnson is not in the mix. I would still be surprised. Trying to pick someone out of this to actually win it is just total guesswork. Okay, but don't be surprised and annoyed that I'm asking you to do that guesswork on the tennis podcast. You look surprised and annoyed when we asked you. Yeah. No, I've said no to Bertic. Bertic is not in the mix. I could do that. Not in my lifetime. Okay, so from here, David, you're picking Shelton? No, you're picking Minsk. No, Minsk, yeah. And Matt, you're picking... I'm going to press you. You're picking Fonseca. Fun. These are fun predictions.

44:28Okay, folks, that's it for part one. We'll be back in part two to talk about Toronto.

44:36Welcome back to part two of today's tennis podcast where we head to Toronto now and the WTA event, the 1000 event happening there this week. And a first match, a first tournament, a first defeat since lifting the Wimbledon Trophy for Linda Nozkova to Katie McNally 7661. And McNally sort of incrementingly increasing her relevance on the WTA Tour in quite an exciting way. And she set up now a third round match with Alexandra Eyalo, who we'll talk about in just a moment. That's a night session match tonight. McNally Eyalo already can't wait for that. Tell us about McNally's victory over Nozkova, Matt.

45:20Yeah, look, she's she's absolutely got game McNally. and I really like her game and it's good to see her becoming more relevant on the tour and like you, I'm looking forward to this match against Iala Noskova fell to pieces I mean she was 5-1 up in the opening set Noskova and it was then it was a bit like how she just couldn't suddenly play against Mukova in the Wimbledon final but very understandably because she was trying to win Wimbledon and then she recovered and got it back on track. Well, this was like she then never recovered from the drop-off. You know, like her numbers at the end of this, 11 double faults, 42 unforced errors, only 48 % first serves in, lost 12 of the last 14 games.

46:08And just once she lost it, she couldn't get it back. And we know she's got quite a high-risk game, you know, in terms of like she goes for lines and she tries to hit the ball flat and sometimes it can look a bit like this. And I think it's an important reminder that, yes, she's shown she's so capable of putting it all together and winning Wimbledon, but it's not always going to look like that. And first match back after you've become a major champion, I think you said it after the Wimbledon final, Catherine, like you almost give her a pass now until the start of next season. You know, like so much just suddenly changes for you.

46:53It's hard, very hard. But I do think McNally-Eyala could be a lot of fun tonight, like just match-up-wise, game-style-wise, that one I'm really into. So, yeah, it was nice for McNally to get that win. Again, like with Hodder, no signs yet of that wall being hit. I mean, she's just riding a wave, Eyala, isn't she? I mean, absolute scenes for her first match, 6-2 in the third over Alicia Parks, David. Yeah, you get some great atmospheres in Toronto generally, especially for these night sessions. But when the Islay came out, I mean, it was absolutely extraordinary. I mean, it might have been a level up on many of the other tournaments that we've had recently from her in terms of atmosphere.

47:45um it's like some homecoming it's just just like the sort of thing you see after somebody comes back to their home country after winning a grand slam um and it was so electric and wonderful i mean alicia parks looked really taken aback at times and a bit irritated as well upon hearing certain things i think after certain serves and stuff like that which i i kind of i do i do get I mean, but you've got to get used to it. You've got to accept it. But there's a look in the eye about Iala. She's still in the zone right now. She's still looking like she's playing tennis pretty much to the limit. She still looks fresh.

48:29She still has that look of real intense focus as though she is right where you want to be with this atmosphere, taking energy from it, kind of almost orchestrating it. I mean, at the end of her match against Park, she was sort of asking for even more noise. I'm thinking, crikey, I'm not sure they can do much more. But there was no, she's not cowed by it at all. At some point, I still think, crikey, it's quite early in the US season to be playing this well and to win this many matches. is you you can't just keep this up can you and just go and just keep winning all the way through the US Open I don't think that's doable so at some point she needs a rest you would have thought but look that's throwing it forward too far I don't I don't want to look at Alexandra Iala through the lens of the US Open all the time I know that I do that a lot but I don't want to do that with her because she's so new on the circuit she's let's just enjoy this this is this is unique this is it's it's it's almost generational into you know we use that word earlier to talk about a lockdown from rafael hodder well this is generational atmosphere um and and an event for for tennis not just women's tennis for tennis this woman is getting 10 times the eyeballs on her kind of online clips than anybody else it seems at the moment so lock in and enjoy i would say the the tournament director said they simply had to put her on the main court like they they had no other choice because of the demand that that was there for her match and presumably it becomes a kind of security concern like a crowd control issue to not put I thought so.

50:24Yeah. She's headlining the night session tonight against Katie McNally. I might set my alarm, wake up in the middle of the night, UK time to watch that one. Amanda Anisimova, Matt, she's beaten Barton Kovar. She's facing Svitolina now. How's the forehand looking now that Rick Vlieshawas is back in the fold? honestly like a little tough to say because i did only see those those 15 minute tennis channel condensed match highlights um and they're not going to show you know all the forehands that she was missing at wimbledon for example in in in that sort of package i think there was still you know like she had some break points at the start of the third set and had second serve returns and missed forehands on both of them.

51:19And there was a couple of opportunities where Barton Kovar rushed her on that shot, you could see. But it was also a lot of good that wasn't there at Wimbledon. So I think it's coming back, hopefully. To me, the thing that stood out was how fast she looked. Like, Barton Kovar was drop-shotting her and playing short balls and Anissa Mova was up to them. And I think she looks a lot more grounded and comfortable moving on a hard court than she does on the clay and the grass, to be honest. And I know she obviously reached the women and final last year, but that was mostly due to the ball striking.

51:56I think the movement looks better on a hard court. She looks more agile, I would say. Backhand, dialed, just cannons coming off that wing, of course. And she had to fight here. She was a set down. She won the second set very easily, but then was twice a breakdown in the third set, but broke back immediately both times and just dug in, fought well, didn't let her frustration boil over like we have seen a lot this year. problem now is she runs into Svitolina and Svitolina was awesome last night against Potopova and has a very good record against Anisimova beat her in Canada last year very comfortably but I do think that was a match that Anisimova didn't really need you know after the Wimbledon final after all the wins she's had Canada didn't mean that much to her Canada I think and this tournament means a lot to Anisimova now she needs she needs to keep to find something going into the US Open so could be a pretty special match actually against against Vitalina I did I liked what I saw from Anisimova with the caveat that I didn't see the full match I do think this stage of the season's Vitalina is vulnerable regardless of how well she's played in the previous match and that obviously the head head is a problem for Anisimova but I just always I don't I just feel like the the well isn't as as deep I mean it isn't for everybody but I feel like that it that in the past couple of seasons has been more extreme for for Svitolina and there was certainly evidence of that in Washington it was Iala she lost to in Washington wasn't it um she almost lost her first match here to Bufas Monero.

53:47She was very close to going out, but as I said, was very good against Potipova. Irina Sabalenka, David, has done what she needed to do for now to keep her world number one ranking. She's into the fourth round where she'll face Ekaterina Alexandrova. Yeah, yeah. It's good to see her back winning again and looking happy. She played the night session in this one, and she made it very clear how much she enjoyed it. Absolutely packed house. You know, this is one of those where, because they're dividing the tournaments up between Montreal and Toronto, she hasn't got to do the whole, oh, I know you're here for so-and-so, but it's very clear they're all here for you, Arena, or at least, you know, there's big crowds that are supporting it.

54:38I did think, you know, I hope Emily Marismo is watching this, because Irina Sabalenka enjoyed that. She's made it very clear that she likes the night session atmosphere. So good on her. And yeah, she needs to get a bit of a run going, doesn't she? Sabalenka needs to get some momentum. Yeah, I'd have thought so. Iga Svantec has dropped only five games through two rounds. She beat Sara Behrlich and she's beaten Victoria Goljubic. That Behrlich match could have turned, definitely. There was a game in the second Svantec serving game where there were about 12, 13 juices maybe. And it felt like, wow, if Baelic gets this back, maybe the whole match is different.

55:21But in the end, Svantec wins it and puts her foot to the floor. And, you know, through two rounds, it feels like we're talking about the Svantec of old, the Egers Bakery Svantec. But she now faces Marta Kostiuk, who absolutely took Madison Keyes to the cleaners last night, Kostiuk. I mean, she sort of big picture seems to be absolutely riding away of Kostiuk. I mean, I would have totally understood if the Wimbledon, the summer, the early summer Marta Kostiuk didn't necessarily carry through until the US Open. And if there was a bit of a drop off, if she looked like she was running on fumes a little bit, well, so far.

56:10Not in the least, Matt. Yeah, I'll be honest, I didn't I didn't see much of this match against Madison Keys because I was so wrapped up in the Alex Dimenor of it all as he was trying to trying to serve it out. and I just was checking the score on this one and it was looking pretty straightforward. So I didn't feel like I had to get eyes on it, but I was expecting it to be much closer than that. Who do you see, both of you, as the favourite in Kostiuk-Swiątek? Not who do you think is going to win, like objectively, as objective as you can be. Who's the favourite there? I still think Swiątek is the favourite.

56:53I think you'd have to look at their pedigree in their records generally and have to go with her. But, I mean, it just wouldn't surprise me at all if Kostiuk came and played lights out and made things very difficult. Equally, I think you can get very one-sided matches for Svantec. If she's playing well and the other player's just a bit off, she can win straightforwardly too. This is the first time Svantec's had like a chunk of time with Francisco Roig, isn't it? To actually train, really. It's been all about tournaments and matches. I think it's going to be interesting in a match like this against Kostiuk, who's beaten her this year, to see whether she can actually implement what she's been working on when she's under pressure.

57:39I felt like she played with a lot of nice patience in those first two matches. You know, Golubic, she's someone with a lot of variety, and Svante didn't let that bother her at all. She was very good. It's just that Kostiuk can apply more pressure and has got more firepower, And that's what I think is the real test of everything Shviontek's been working on really for quite a long time now. But I don't know. She seems in good spirits, I've thought, in some of her interviews that I've seen. I really want to see Shviontek come out firing and see whether Kostiuk can live with her. Yeah, it's a great match.

58:22Tasty match, yeah. Yeah, really tasty. Maya Joint won a couple of matches. I mean, back-to-back match wins for Maya Joint in 2026 is a really big deal. Great win over Serana Castella, who might be on fumes a bit now, Castella. We've had Mirandreva looking good so far. She faces home favourite Leila Fernandez tonight. Emma Navarro lost, Matt, to the talented young Russian Alina Korneva. So it's Kornieva Jovic now. You watched the Navarro-Kornieva match and had a fun time?

59:04Not really. It wasn't particularly a fun time, I wouldn't have said. It was a bit of a demolition. Well, it's made it onto the agenda. Well, that comment is about Jovic-Kornieva, which I think is interesting. Two players born in 2007, And yet I think we know a lot more about Jovic. But Corneva was the junior in 2003. She beat Andreeva in the Australian Open final. In 2023. Sorry, 2023. She literally wasn't born in 2023. She also won the French Open girls that year. She won the first two. She finished the year number one. She's just had horrible injuries since then. She had a wrist injury. She had an adductor problem.

59:49she's missed about 15 months of competition and obviously she'll have seen what Andreeva's gone on to do in that time and now what Jovic is doing but Corneva this season has jumped a lot she's won a lot of matches at tour level at world tennis tour level she reached the semi-finals in Athens a couple of weeks ago she got a win over Valantova there and she's absolutely destroyed Navarro here 2-2 and I think she feels like a lot of matches are on her racket, Corneva. I think obviously Jovic is very, very good and I would expect Jovic to win but I'm just interested to see where Corneva's at, I suppose, coming up against someone who is in her age but has achieved a lot more on the tour.

1:00:40She's coached by Annabelle Medina-Guriguez, is Corneva and there's a good interview with her on the WTA website where she's talked about how she realised that she needs to watch tennis and study her opponents and she started doing that a lot more and she thinks that's really helpful for her to create tactical plans to face certain opponents. So, you know, really interested just how that one goes and that might be first up today actually in Canada. She was coach of Yelena Ostapenko, as I recall, when Ostapenko won the French Open, Medina Gorriguez. So that's a Grand Slam winning coach she's got there, which, you know, good stuff.

1:01:28Who might have performed wonders, actually, those two weeks. Yeah, might be a generational coach, Medina Gorriguez. Okay, that's it for part two and your Toronto roundup of what's happened so far. We'll be back in part three with just a couple of bits and bobs of news.

1:01:47Welcome back to part three of today's tennis podcast. A couple of bits of WTA news. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the WTA players have been asked in their pre-tournament and post-match press conferences about the story that we reported on a week or so ago about the WTA's new DNA-based sex testing policy. The quotes are floating around out there. None are particularly surprising. A lot of reluctance from players to get lost in the weeds on this. A deep awareness, I'd have thought, of what an easily inflamed topic it is, or already inflamed topic it is. But unsurprisingly, Coco Gough has expressed the most informed, sensitive and nuanced view of the lot.

1:02:41I mean, it's amazing how she does this, really. She's managed to express, you know, very, very clear and heartfelt support for the trans community, while also stating the general need to protect the integrity of women's sport and an awareness of what a lightning rod of a topic this is. I mean, she just, it's so easy to say, I don't want to talk about this. I'm just a tennis player. These aren't my decisions. And she so rarely resorts to that. She's so impressive. Thank goodness for her, Catherine, because, you know, quite often when these topics come up, obviously people want to ask the players, their view.

1:03:29It affects the players. It affects the sport. they are the people that are the most high profile people to talk about it it's just that quite often you feel as though they're unequipped or unprepared to properly engage with it and she is on both stands and she just makes i read her quotes and i nod my head and and that is pretty much without fail and and i'm i'm just so grateful that she is there yeah absolutely and you say that we want to hear from the players which to a certain extent i do but i want to hear from the wta leadership on this yeah like don't you think like when something like this comes out it really should be the the wta leadership the ones who've made the decision who are front and center for press conferences and questions like yes it affects these players but they're not the ones who have made the decision and yet they're the ones who have to answer all the questions like I just think it's staggering that something like this can like a big thing can be made and the and the and the WTA can just put out a statement yeah stick it out in a press release and don't do press conferences and let the players do those yeah yeah you're right I agree yeah absolutely I think it's legit for the players to be, even though I, you know, kind of Coco Goff aside because I trust her to be informed.

1:05:01I'm not that interested in what the players have to say about it generally, unless it is clear that they are informed on the topic, because this is such a nuanced topic that requires such delicacy that, you know, If somebody isn't properly informed and reasoned on it, it's just not an opinion I'm hugely interested in. And yet their opinion is relevant because the WTA in their statement said, a big motivation for this has been that WTA players, certainly some of them, they say, have been asking for it. So it's completely legit to ask. But yeah, I completely agree. I mean, unfortunately, it's the playbook we see in politics quite a lot now, isn't it?

1:05:46It's the Farage playbook. Make a statement. Don't invite the media. Don't have to take any questions on it. But yeah, I completely agree with you, Matt. David, we've had the news that WTA Ventures, which is kind of the commercial marketing arm of the WTA and ATP, there's an ATP equivalent. There was a lot of talk. In fact, I think the plan, the default plan was for those two entities to merge for a long time and to form tennis ventures and for that to be like the first step towards an intended merger of the two tours for the marketing departments to merge first. And then let's take it from there.

1:06:33I believe tennis ventures is now pretty much off the cards. And so we have WTA ventures and ATP ventures. and WTA Ventures, we are hearing, have appointed IMG, the huge management company, as its production partner for broadcast, replacing DAZN. David, you've done a bit of a deep dive on this. You've had a bit of a briefing about it. What does it mean to the tennis fan? What's the relevance of this? What's the importance of this move? well i think whilst i would love to have seen the two tours come together of course and and be combined and really put their full weight behind just selling the the product and communicating the product of tennis um in the absence of that i am encouraged by this because i think there has been a shortfall and a big disparity between the way the WTA tour and the ATP tour have been presented over the years.

1:07:41Tennis TV, I think, do a magnificent job of promoting men's tennis. The WTA removed themselves from that platform many years ago because they weren't getting a fair deal in their view and they went out on their own. And I don't think, whilst the The DAZN deal, which was a 10-year deal, did promise to produce footage of every single match on the WTA circuit. And it's been good to that. They have done that. I don't think they've packaged and presented that to the tennis fan over the years in a way that it has been really satisfactorily able to digest and to consume the product. This should help with that.

1:08:28this should help with the broadcast quality i think it will make it a lot more aligned um and and able to sort of tell a story for for tennis um that's the hope and be a lot more integrated that i think the social side of things should improve because that the content will be there and everybody have access to it within within the operation the sort of conversations i've been having the last couple of days make me feel that everything should be a lot more integrated that they produce matches, that it goes into a system, there are people working on it. There's obviously, there's a lot of AI going on in terms of producing match highlight footage.

1:09:08And some of that is, over the last couple of years, I've found very substandard. What I would say is having had a good look at the WTA's YouTube site this morning and compared it to Tennis TV and ATP, they are now doing more match highlights than anybody else, the WTA tour. and they have lengthened them to sort of six minutes, which is a much better length at least in terms of being able to, right, I want to know what happened overnight. I can go and watch some highlights. If I went back six or eight months ago, it wasn't like that. I still think there are some real gaps. You know, I watched the Anissa Mova highlights today and the first seven points, Anissa Mova won and she was 2-4 down.

1:09:51And I just don't understand, you know, how that can happen. But that's one of the downsides, I think, of AI, really. But you simply cannot have editors doing every single match. You would just need such an enormous team of people. But I think that the IMG deal, they are vastly experienced. They do this for a lot of others. Wimbledon, for instance, produced their own broadcast, which then goes to everybody else. and that's increasingly the way things happen. I think this should help with getting the product out there, making it easier to consume. Yeah, look, I worked with IMG's production partners with Amazon for five years.

1:10:42Amazon didn't have their own house productions. They appointed IMG to kind of run all that under the guidance of executives from Amazon. and they know what they're doing. They're an incredibly experienced, well-oiled outfit with a lot of resources and a lot of expertise. I would say that everything depends on budget. You know, like there's not many corners to be cut here. You get what you pay for in TV production and that's kind of a that's a vicious circle isn't it because you know you you increase you increase revenues and increase budgets by by growing the sport and you grow the sport by by putting money into the production and and getting eyeballs on the game and and and all of that so um it's kind of a self-feeding uh ecosystem or that's the plan we see that don't we If you compare the ATP production versus the WTA over the years, it has been night and day, really, in terms of the feel.

1:11:52Absolutely. Yeah. And look, good, really good people, really good producers can eek more out of a budget than average producers, for sure. But generally in TV, you get what you pay for, is my experience. Um, okay. I think that's it for today's show. We'll be back on Monday though, uh, to talk about, well, more things that have happened in Canada over the weekend. Probably a lot of it in the middle of the night. Not sure how much sleep we'll have had over the weekend, but I'm excited to lose sleep in order to watch Alexandra Ayala. Uh, we have our mascots. We have Bodhi, Maisie and Roger. We had some Roger visual updates this week, Matt, which I enjoyed very much.

1:12:42We have swimming Roger. Swimming. I didn't know I didn't know Bernie's Mountain Dogs were swimmers, Matt. This was a real revelation for me. He must take so long to dry off. So long. Yeah, I loved it so much. He managed to look small, his tiny little head poking out from the big expanse of water. Thank you, Carrie, for sending that. Bodhi and Maisie, visual update. Content is very much welcomed. Please do send me some Bodhi and Maisie content. Hello to our top folks and executive producers, Greg, Chris and Jeff. We salute you and we'll take some shout outs, Matt. We have a couple today. we have Ruth Murray from Hertfordshire.

1:13:35Hello, Ruth Murray from Hertfordshire, which is where my brother and family live. Lovely part of the world. Ruth, like my childhood best friend. And Murray, like the Murrays.

1:14:00tennis ruths that's tough isn't it pam's definitely going to text us but off the top of my head i've got nothing what do we know about ruth ruth and her husband robin went to wimbledon for the first time this year was wearing her tennis podcast t-shirt go on ruth Ruth. Love that. First time Wimbledon is a vibe, is a real vibe. That's a like, wow, I'm here kind of moment. So hope you both had that. Thank you, Ruth. And finally, we have Susan Ford from Chicago. Hello, Susan. Like Susan Lajovic. Indeed And Chicago Like Chicago Matt in Chicago And Susan says I play tennis with a lovely group of friends And we're constantly referencing or retelling Good lines or insights we hear on the pod Keep up the wonderful energy Which is a lovely message Lovely message Thank you Susan And thank you for giving us an opportunity To relive the summer hits of Chicago and Susan Lajovic, truly two of my favourite bits from summer 2026.

1:15:27Susan and Ruth, thank you ever so much for being friends of the Tennis Podcast. If you'd like to become a friend of the pod, the link is in the show notes. And if you do become a friend, you get access to our whole archive, including the show that we did on Wednesday night with Pam, your friend of mine, Pamela Howard-Shriver, debating and discussing what to do about doubles, Obviously, in light of the announcement or other news that leaked from the ATP during Wimbledon that they're planning to drastically change the face of doubles on the ATP tour, much to the consternation of much of the doubles tennis world.

1:16:02Certainly, a lot of the top men's doubles players have spoken out about it. It sparked a lot of debate. We decided to deep dive on that debate with 22-time major doubles champion Pam Shriver on Wednesday night. and that show is up now for Friends of the Pod. Link to become a friend in the show notes. We'll be back on Monday with our next show. We are part of the Athletic Podcast Network. Thank you for listening. We'll speak to you then.