French Open Day 4 - A frenzy of drama, injuries and upsets

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1:15Matt Roberts: Hello and welcome to the Tennis Podcast. The three of us coming to you shortly before 11pm from the grounds of Roland Garros after a breathless fourth day of action here at the French Open. I have been canvassing opinion for how people would sum up today in just one word. And we've had frenzied, we've had uncomfortable, we've had disconcerting, we've had distressing. Matt, David, there have been some very high, high points throughout today, but there have been some low points as well. And there have definitely been some weird points. Yeah, I'll say.

1:55Catherine Whitaker: I think of this as our traditional Roland Garros recording spot. We're next to Philippe Chatrier tonight, but we haven't actually recorded here since last year's French Open men's final. And let me tell you, the vibes could not be more different for this podcast. Like we knew what that was and how it made us feel. It made us feel a lot of things, but they were joyful and upbeat and amazing. This has been a very unsettling day, I thought, especially like it took a turn mid-afternoon. It was hot. It was going along as the day was going. and then suddenly we had some pretty tough stuff start happening.

2:45Catherine Whitaker: And look, there was good in there as well. There were good matches, there were comebacks, there were good stories, but there were injuries and all sorts of distressing scenes on court. And yeah, trying to react to all of that and put it all together in one day is just difficult. I feel like I've been in a blender, to be honest.

3:06David Law: And of all the words that you mentioned at the start of the show, Catherine, frenzied is the one I most relate to because there have been some really good things within it. And I've been exhilarated at times. My eyes have been everywhere because there's been so much going on. A classic first week day, but heightened and actually, yes, made distressing because of some of the scenes that we've encountered. So I do leave with a bit of a sour taste as well as having thought, oh, that was a great day in other ways.

3:44Matt Roberts: Yeah, there is a lot to get through today. We're going to try and touch upon all the important stuff that has unfolded here in Paris today. So let's start, I think, with Iga Svante, because I think today was an absolutely massive day for her. not because of her match in particular. She won today very comfortably against the young Czech, Sara Bailik. Not a huge amount to report there. But what is significant for Iga Svjantek is that her two biggest obstacles standing in her path en route to the final and maybe the title here are gone. Second seed, Elena Rabakina is out, as is former champion and general Svjantek slayer, Jelena Ostapenko.

4:27Matt Roberts: If Igor Svantec could have had three genie wishes today, David, I think it would have been for those three things to happen.

4:36David Law: Yeah, I'd agree. And particularly Ostapenko, because she's the most immediate one. And look, Magdalena Lynette, who beat Yelena Ostapenko, is a very good player and has beaten Igor Svantec not that long ago. But it doesn't carry the stress that Ostapenko brings. Now, I actually think Svantexin may be the kind of frame of mind that almost might have relished the chance. She at some point wants to beat Ostopenko, to just put that behind her. I think there might be a bit of her that would like the challenge of it. But at the same time, if you're going to offer her not to have to deal with that, she's probably going to take it.

5:17David Law: And the fact that she's not going to face Rybakken as well, the player who caused her trouble here last year and has beaten her several times on big occasions before and has that kind of game. I mean, yeah, this has really worked out well for her. You can't make plans for players losing, but my word, you make the best of them when they happen.

5:38Matt Roberts: Let's cover off Ostapenko first quickly. She lost out to Magda Lynette, 6-2, 2-6, 6-2. She kind of only has herself to blame here, Yelena Ostapenko. I think David described her performance at the end there. I know you two were out on court watching the latter stages of this, David was absolutely scathing about Ostapenko's professionalism upon return from the court. Did you feel the same?

6:04Catherine Whitaker: Yeah, it was shocking. I mean, David and I were huddled together in the tiny bit of shade that was being generated by the scoreboard because you literally could not sit down on the benches for the press seats unless you had a towel or an extra piece of clothing because it would burn you. It was like really, really hot. So we were standing up in this little bit of shade directly behind Ostapenko's player box. And all throughout that deciding set, she was just turning to them after every error that she would hit, and there were a lot of them, and waving her arms and gesturing for her mother to leave the box.

6:52Catherine Whitaker: And it just kept happening. She kept looking over there and eventually her mother took it upon herself and got up and left. And honestly, witnessing that really up close, I found that really uncomfortable. It was such a horrible vibe there between mother and daughter. You just don't want to see that. It was really hard to watch. and yeah, the mother left and Ostapenko's tennis didn't really improve. She kept going for it and missing largely and Magdalenette is certified tricky and knows how to draw these things out and stay in points and nullify threats and she did all of that really well and dealt with these really hard conditions.

7:39Catherine Whitaker: But yeah, Ostapenko was all over the place and I'd been out there at the start of the match in the first set, and it kind of dawned on me that actually maybe Magdalenaire was the worst possible opponent for her to face to set up the Svantec match because all of Poland had come out to help Magdalenaire and Iga Svantec. Everyone in the crowd, basically, was a Polish fan. There were even three men spelling out Iga on their T-shirts, trolling Ostopenko by applauding her errors, and Ostopenko had a word with the umpire. I was over the other side of the court, but basically, I think, asking the umpire to tell them to stop doing that and stop sort of distracting her.

8:23Catherine Whitaker: It was a scene, and it was like, I think everyone on the outside was really rooting for Ostapenko's Fiontech to happen. I know I was. I've been desperate for that to happen. But in that match, on that court, it felt like actually Ostapenko was the real villain there, and nobody wanted Ostapenko's Fiontech to happen. and they just worked together, Lynette and the crowd, and annoyed Ostapenko and got the job done for Lynette and for Svantec. But yeah, Svantec's draw does remain tough, I think, even though I agree with you that these have been good results for her today. There's still a gauntlet of players left in her half, I would say, who are in good form.

9:10And Lynette is tricky.

9:13Matt Roberts: objectively but Lynette is tricky for Svantec she's beaten her this year she's got Agnieszka Radvanska in her corner like that is a third round match that comes with its own intrigue that I will be interested in it's just not Svantec, Ostapenko and frankly nothing else in tennis is so it was a bit of a bummer quite frankly but well done Magda Lynette so that's Ostapenko's loss covered off what about Elena Rabakino she seemed to be in firm control against the Ukrainian Yulia Stabdubseva You might remember her from a deep dive we did on her after she reached the final in Charleston just a few weeks ago, obviously at the start of this clay court season, ended up getting a bit of a drubbing by Pagula in that final, but it was a real breakthrough moment for her to reach that 500-level final.

10:01Matt Roberts: And she was awesome today, 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 in the third, 10-4 in the deciding set tie break. a very odd match in its cadence in Elena Rabachner's performance. She was definitely struggling badly with the heat throughout the second and third sets and actually her performance was improving throughout the third set, throughout the third set, I thought, directly in line with how the shadow was progressing across the court. And I really backed her in the tiebreak because by that point the shadow was pretty much entirely covering the court. and I did not see coming the spectacularly poor tiebreak that Rabakina ended up playing to exit this tournament.

10:47Catherine Whitaker: I think she ended this match with close to 50 forehand unforced errors, Rabakina. I joined it when she was five love down in the second set and the number was already around 30 and I was just fascinated by it. it just kept ticking up on the stat sheet that they put up on the scoreboard. And, yeah, I think we got up to pretty much 50. It was just staggering. So many forehand errors and a raft of them in the middle of that final set tiebreak where it really got away from her as, you know, it was too all, that tiebreak. And then before you knew it, she was 9-3 down, just error after error. And, look, Rebecca is not as convincing a player on clay, I don't think.

11:36Catherine Whitaker: with the movement. I think Starad Upseva did a good job generally of playing with shape on the ball and pushing her out to that forehand side. But also, make no mistake, a lot of these errors were just poor from her back. It was like she never got to grips with the way the ball was flying through the air. Certainly, I didn't see the first set, but certainly in the bits that I did see, she was overhitting so much. The ball was flying, it was hot, and she seemed to make no adjustments. for that whatsoever. I was absolutely stunned because, as you said, she'd been a double breakdown in the third set, got it back, and then credit Staradip Saver who served to stay in the match twice at 4-5 and 5-6.

12:21Catherine Whitaker: And I think both times I thought, OK, we're back and I could close it here. But Staradip Saver stayed really strong. And, you know, from what I saw, I thought she was kind of the better, more consistent player through the match. and pretty much deserve the win. And it is amazing what these Ukrainian women are doing, especially this clay court season. We've had so many great results for them. But from a Rebecca perspective, it was a baffling performance.

12:52Matt Roberts: Yeah, I mean, just on Stara Dobrzejewa, we said some of this at the time of her Charleston run to the final, but she went through US college. She went to Old Dominion, graduated in 2022. so her entire pro career has been played with war going on at home her hometown in ukraine is occupied by by russian russian forces her friends had to set up or did set up a gofundme in 2024 to try and like springboard her pro career just to try and get her to a few tournaments to get her some points and get the ball rolling a bit and you know boy has that paid off she qualified for all four majors last year and became the first woman in the open era to do that so she's been making noises as you you leave starved up sober and she's she's a heck of a player but yeah Rebecca you know this was this was a bizarre one from her and there was the the sort of sub story of her coach Stefano Vukov not being in her players box at the end of the match he started the match in the box he left we think after the first set don't know if it was exactly at the end of the first set but around about then he certainly wasn't there Matt when you arrived on court

14:06Catherine Whitaker: with her trailing five love in the second set no exactly because I got on court and had a look to see which player box was where and it took me a moment to figure it out because frankly I was looking for Vukov you know he was the he was the face I would know and recognize and when he wasn't there I was a bit I was a bit surprised by that and yeah there did seem to be this this you know correlation it's not necessarily the cause but Rabakina's game fell off dramatically when when

14:38David Law: he wasn't there it's it's a very small sample size absolutely you can't draw cause and effect but what we do know is having witnessed the career of Elena Rabakina for a long time now and and and had the opportunity to listen to the coaches being mic'd up in that corner and the fact that they're allowed to coach now his line of communication to her is constant it is every single end of a point is passing on messages to her whether they're encouraging whether they are tactical whether they are just you know just cajoling or whatever I mean obviously in in times gone by it was more concerning because it was it was a sort of aggressive and and and loud and and these days it isn't ever so i mean this is a guy who who was suspended of course and and i must say since he's come back we haven't heard that kind of tone but it is constant communication and suddenly today after a set he wasn't there and she lost that next set six one that's pretty much the fact pattern as we understand it.

15:46David Law: Like I say, tiny sample size may have nothing to do with it whatsoever, but those are things that happened.

15:52Matt Roberts: She was asked about it in her post-match press conference by Matt Futterman, The Athletic. She was incredibly defensive and said he's not been feeling well. She always knew it was a possibility that he wouldn't be able to stay for the whole match. No big deal. It's fine. That's the extent of what we know about that situation. So Ostapenko out, Rabakina out. Does this propel Iga Svontek, the four-time former champion, to tournament favourite?

16:26David Law: I would still say no because of the fact that Irina Sabalenka is there and I believe she is the favourite for the tournament and I don't think this changes things. They wouldn't meet until the final.

16:41Matt Roberts: So Sabalenka, who's never won it over Goff who has and Shvantec that has four times yeah listen it's not as clear cut

16:50David Law: in my mind as it would be if it was on a hard court but I also I do I do value form um I and I value form at the moment because if this was a year ago I probably wouldn't be saying this because Shvantec had just not been losing here at all now that she has been beaten here both in the Olympics and at the French Open, and we've seen some vulnerability. I don't have quite the confidence in her at the moment that I have had in the past. That's not to say it can't be rebuilt, because I definitely feel she's trending well. The game looks pretty secure, and she looks comfortable in what she's trying to do out there.

17:34David Law: She was a bit irritated by her own serve today, but I think even that's good news. She feels there's room for improvement. And look, it's made her much closer, much closer to being favoured. I don't know what you think, Matt.

17:49Catherine Whitaker: It's definitely raised her in my mind because, frankly, I thought Ostapenko was such a problem for her in the third round. I wasn't really looking too much beyond that, you know, because she's never beaten her and I thought that match was going to happen. So that has definitely changed things. And look, she's won this event four times. she can definitely win it again. I have a few more concerns about the form of Svantec herself. I'm a bit more worried about that serve percentage. Less than 40 % against someone who was not actually doing a lot of damage on return. And I think the serve has been a problem for long enough now that I don't fully trust it, I suppose.

18:36Catherine Whitaker: And she was struggling to know when to pull the trigger today. Bayek won 48 points. 38 of them were Sviontek unforced errors. This was not a clean performance. And I totally think Ostopenko out of the way is good news. I think we're backing him out of the way is good news too. I'm not sure it's better news than Svitolina going out of the way. I would arguably put Svitolina, having beaten Svantec a couple of times this year and in better form, I would say, than Rabatkinner. To David's point about form, I think she might still be a bigger threat to Svantec than even Rabatkinner was.

19:21Matt Roberts: Just to say, Svitolina, a very comfortable winner today. It was almost like she got her stress out of the way in round one. And today she was like, not today. Caitlin Covedo, the Spanish player love and fall for Svitolina today very efficient

19:37David Law: But you were worried about Svitolina's physical canister and how much she'd got in the tank, how much she'd taken out of it a couple of days ago long match, all the Rome run Yeah, I was worried about it

19:51Catherine Whitaker: if she didn't start winning efficiently right, and she got the efficient win today so I think if she can get a couple more of those by the time she gets to Svante, I think she'll be okay. But I am a bit worried about that if she still has to really fight through the next few rounds, I suppose.

20:10David Law: But it does feel like you say, now that she's won that one, she's starting to free wheel.

20:16Matt Roberts: Yeah, big time, I think, absolutely. All these players, we're now into rounds being played over two days. So all these players you're hearing about are in the same half of the draw.

20:28David Law: God, that's nice, isn't it?

20:29Matt Roberts: It's a relief for me.

20:31David Law: I think it's a relief for anybody who's trying to make sense of it.

20:34Matt Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. Things just suddenly start to kind of lock into place in my mind once we reach this stage of the tournament. So, Sitalina very comfortable today. Kostiuk not comfortable at all, but fought through two hours and 43 minutes against Katie Volinez for her 6-3 in the third. It's Golubic next for Kostiuk, formerly of backhand list fame. Golly bitch, single-hander.

21:01Catherine Whitaker: Great shot.

21:02Matt Roberts: Great shot, just not backhand list worthy in the year 2026. In terms of Yulia Starob-Dub-Tsaverin, who she faces next, incidentally, it is Wong Ziyu. And that is because she went through to round three following an horrific, an absolutely horrific fall from Hayley Baptiste in their match. Baptiste was at 5-4 in the first set. and honestly if a clip of this pops up on your feed if you're online, like scroll past it, it is horrible. I wish I hadn't seen it. I wish I hadn't heard the noise that Matt Futterman made when he saw it. It is still ringing in my ears. It was terrible. It was the knee. I won't go any further into it than that.

21:49She was on the floor, writhing in agony, crying out.

21:54Matt Roberts: The match is kind of still live at this point. she hasn't officially defaulted it. Members of her team are trying to come down onto the court to kind of comfort her, but they're sort of not officially allowed because the match is still going on. The medics did eventually get there and she was taken in a wheelchair off the court and she obviously hasn't been depressed. So, I mean, I doubt she knows at the moment how bad it is. There's no way she bounces back and is playing normally in a couple of weeks' time after that. I don't think, I mean, you know, worst-case scenario, that's a season-ender and more.

22:29Matt Roberts: You know, it was one of a few horrible scenes today, quite honestly, there's no way around it.

22:37Catherine Whitaker: Yeah, awful, awful. And, you know, that would be a bad thing to happen to anyone at any time in their career. But for it to happen to Hayley Baptiste, who's just on this great run at the moment, having just saved a couple of match points the other day and beaten Irina Sabalenka earlier in the clay court season. She's got this Nike deal now. She's just... It feels like her time, and suddenly it's been wrenched away from her. And, you know, I really, really hope it's not as serious as it looked because it looked like a bad one.

23:20Matt Roberts: Yeah, she will be missed, and we wish her so well in her recovery. That was a really tough scene today. Mirandreva is still in this bottom half of the draw. She dropped the first set to Marina Basel's Ribera, ended up coming through fairly comfortably in the end. Jasmine Paolini is not, though. Another very, very distressing scene for her. On Longland, lost out to Solana Sierra, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3. By the end of this match, we were all watching it together on the laptop over dinner. By the end of it, Paolini was limping and in tears for most of the final set of this. I mean, the fact that she made it competitive was pretty extraordinary.

24:09Matt Roberts: I mean, I don't think Sierra played a particularly smart match against an injured opponent, but I know that that's one of those things that's trickier than it sounds. but it was horrible to watch. We go to Paolini for vibes, David, and this was really upsetting.

24:27David Law: Yeah, you don't want to see anybody as sad as she looked. You don't want to see anybody as in pain and distressed as Baptiste looked. And, yeah, Paolini's had a really, really tough season. There's no getting away from it and she's not looked herself all year. This was obviously, it's exacerbated by it being an injury. I just hope there are better times ahead for her because she's been one of the great, happy stories of the last couple of years.

25:03Matt Roberts: Yeah, hear him, absolutely. Wins today for Belinda Bencic, Karolina Mukova, Sarana Kisteja. and in terms of who Alina Svitolina's next opponent is. Well, it is Tamara Korpach. Matt, tell us about the day that Tamara Korpach had today. Bring us some fun.

25:25Catherine Whitaker: Yeah, this was fun. People quite often ask me, like, at the start of a Grand Slam day, oh, what's your plan? What are you going to do? And I'm like, well, I'm thinking I'll do this and this, but you've always got to leave some room open for something unexpected happening. And what I was not expecting was Corpac Wong holding me up because I was desperate to see the handshake. David and I were debating whether or not to go to lunch because I needed to see this handshake at the end of this match. And in the end, we took David's laptop to lunch so that we could do both things at the same time. And it delivered the handshake.

26:03Catherine Whitaker: In fact, we didn't get one. We got an argument at the net instead, which was just what I was looking for. Because what had happened is that, well, Wong had channeled the spirit of Martina Hingis, French Open final 1999, by walking around the other side of the net, which you're not allowed to do, and going to check a mark, because she thought that Corpac was showing the wrong mark to the umpire. And I think what ended up happening is that there were two marks, and they were both out, but Wong Chin-Hu thought that Korpach had very obviously gone to the mark that was more out. So, you know, it was absolute scenes.

26:51Catherine Whitaker: There was this tension between them the whole match. Korpach, I think, got a hindrance call on the rise for celebrating too soon during a point. It was a whole situation. And, yeah, they had an argument at the net and Corpatch faked a handshake a couple of times, but Wong was absolutely not having it. She was seething with Corpatch. There was more chat afterwards between Corpatch and the umpire. I think Corpatch was checking that she had actually shaken the umpire's hand in all this. It was all happening. And then to finish it off, we got a lovely bit of Tamara Corpatch Instagram action, which we all know and love from the Harmony Tan situation days.

27:37Catherine Whitaker: And this one was Corpatch going on Instagram, writing a statement in Comic Sans, saying, Guys, please, to your comments, no sportsmanship and unfair whatever. What do you want me to do? Gift my opponent a point if it's my point, just to be fair? What's this? Three question marks. If it's out, it's out. There were even two ball marks out, so choose one wink emoji. Just a classic of the genre from Corpac right there. Loved it. No notes.

28:14Matt Roberts: Thank goodness for tomorrow we get to end part one on something fun and silly. Thank you, Tamara Corpac. Good luck to you in the next round against Alina Svitolina. That is it for part one. We'll be back in part two to talk about the men's matches.

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30:47Matt Roberts: Welcome back to part two of today's tennis podcast. Turning our attention to the men's matches of today. Now, a whole lot of drama for us to cover here. Let's start with Novak Djokovic and his main character energy and his four-set win over the Frenchman Valentin Royer. 6-3, 6-2, 6-7, 6-3 in three hours and 44 minutes. David, you watched quite a lot of this. could you give us a potted summary, please? Because for a couple of sets, Djokovic was in uber-efficient mode. We were marvelling at his ability to go into what you describe as a sort of meditative state. Like, I can't afford to deploy any extraneous energy here.

31:31Matt Roberts: I've got to just lock down. And he did, but only for two sets.

31:35David Law: Yeah, because he arrived onto court third match on in the hottest of all the conditions in the day. and the match was going to play out like that. And he has not always been a player who has enjoyed hot conditions. In fact, he's never been a guy who's enjoyed hot conditions. He's won in spite of them and in spite of his distress when he's playing in them. And today, he just knew what he was in for and he just came out and he was very deliberate and he was surgical. He used his aura, I felt, against Royer, who was trying to be explosive and trying to get the home crowd involved and so forth, but just couldn't make any impacts on Djokovic.

32:18David Law: He wasn't really being allowed to, and Djokovic, I thought, was just sublime. Two sets to love. He's only lost a handful of games in those whole two sets, but he didn't put him away, and he had chances in the third set. He was leading by a break in that set as well. He didn't take those chances, and just by being that little bit ragged, it let Royer back in, And Royer is a very extravagant player and somebody who lives off the adrenaline of the crowd. And they live off him showing them and giving them reason to get excited. And, of course, then that winds up Novak Djokovic and he gets a little bit ratty.

32:57David Law: And he wants to take the crowd on if they're going to give him a hard time. So it started to have all the good bits of Novak Djokovic against the crowd. The only thing was that he wasn't bargaining on losing the third set. and on a tie break and having to go into a fourth. And the thing is, that could have got really messy, you know, physically. I mean, it was almost four hours as it was. But rather than becoming ragged, which he could have been, and irritated to a point where he loses his way altogether, he actually used it as fuel. He hit a couple of blinding winners and celebrated them with some real gusto.

33:34David Law: Hand to the ear, you know, it was kind of, It was a little bit like when he was trying to take on the Italian crowd in that Davis Cup and find some energy from the crowd. He was doing that a bit today. I mean, they ended up on pretty good terms in the post-match interview, but Royer did enough to make it a bit uncomfortable. And I think the fact that Djokovic won this match and was stretched to not that much shy of four hours, just the right side, I feel, of the too gruelling line. I think that this will help play him in and get him matched tough and hopefully still be enough left in the tank.

34:10Matt Roberts: See, I would have thought the same, David, but I don't think Djokovic thinks that. I went to his post-match press conference. I mean, it was brilliant. Like, yeah, I learned it was one of those Djokovic press conferences where he's too knackered and fed up with nonsense to bother with any pretense or trying to ingratiate himself with anybody or being polite or pandering to any nonsense jokes or anything. He was just saying it how he saw it. No filibustering with his answers. It was punchy stuff from Djokovic. He was pissed off that that match went as long as it did. He thought he was cruising to an efficient three sets to love win.

35:00Matt Roberts: And one of the first questions was from Charlie Eccleshire, an excellent question. And it was couched in exactly the terms that you just described. Like, not as long as it could have been. You've had these two matches where you've been tested physically. You've come through. You haven't had to go the distance and really put too much strain on your body. But you've been tested and you seem all right. and you know sometimes there are those lines in films where they like say say the film in a line like say the point of the film or the plot of the film in a line that's what Djokovic's answer was it was like it was almost like breaking the fourth wall of tennis he like his eyes eyes bulged out of his head and he said not a long match you think three and a half hours on clay is not a long match he said it is long and it is very exhausting and like we'll come on to talk about the rest of the men's tennis that we saw today but I feel like that is the plot of men's tennis at the moment that we are so institutionalised and have so normalised five and six-hour matches that if we're not reaching that point, we're like, yeah, it was a bit tough today, but, you know, look, it's all fine, isn't it?

36:30Matt Roberts: Like, we shouldn't be thinking of three hours, 44 minutes in baking unhealthy heat as a mid-length match. That is absolutely wild. But that is where we are in men's tennis.

36:46David Law: And it's true. It is what we all think. That's what I've said when I've summed up how his progress has looked. But, yeah, I mean, Djokovic is right. That is a tough afternoon.

36:59Matt Roberts: He said, I expended a lot of energy today, and the subtext there, which was shouting itself from the rooftops, was energy that I don't think I have to spare.

37:12Catherine Whitaker: Interesting. Very interesting. I feel like Charlie would have loved, in a way, having that picked apart. He's such a, like, loves the language of sport and what we use. It was so revealing.

37:26Matt Roberts: He got such a revealing answer from Djokovic. It was a brilliant exchange.

37:30Catherine Whitaker: And look, it's interesting. There was a piece I saw today about how, you know, in football, there were, like, rules about how you can't play matches within two days of each other. And look, footballers run further than tennis players, even over 90 minutes. But tennis players are out there for, well, four hours in this case, in brutal conditions, running a lot and being really explosive. And they have to come back in two days. There's no rule against that. And then they've got to do it seven times to win one of these things. It is brutal. and I don't know, I suppose the positive spin for Djokovic I would read on that is that, to David's point about his form, like he's probably pissed off because he knows his form's getting there and is good and like it's spending this long on court can cost him, you know, if he wasn't playing well or he didn't think he was going to be playing well by the end of the tournament, He might be a little bit less bothered about it because he doesn't see a route through.

38:40But I think that, to me, suggests that he thinks he can do really well here

38:45Catherine Whitaker: and he needs to be avoiding these sorts of matches. Yeah, fascinating.

38:51Matt Roberts: Absolutely. His next opponent in round three will be Joel Fonseca. This was absolutely one of today's high points. His coming back from two sets to love down to beat Dino Prismich, 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1, 6-2. Absolute scenes on court 14 with those Brazilian fans. Dino was soaring for a bit here. We had a message through from my brother Math on the group saying Dino is a guy that's only got 2.5 good sets of tennis in him at any point. And it was, you know, that was the case today. It was awesome.

39:30David Law: for two sets. Do we think that's because he's just not quite durable enough yet?

39:35Matt Roberts: I think so, yeah. And watching this, once it went to five, and Prismic did produce some good flashes of tennis in that fifth set, and I think it's huge for Fonseca that he's done this. You know, he's come through this physical battle because he's been getting a bit of grief about his physicality. He's been, you know, he's had a lot of grief generally. It's not his fault he's been hyped to the rafters and hasn't quite lived up to what we all thought he would. He's been doing his best. But a lot of that, a lot of the criticism has been aimed at his physicality. And that he hasn't performed an Alcaraz-esque physical transformation in one offseason as if that's normal.

40:22Matt Roberts: So I think this is huge for him. But as I went into the fifth set, I sort of looked at both of them and I don't think there's much difference in age, but I did think you need to be winning this, Fonseca, because this is all new to Prismic. Best of five set matches, playing a fifth set at slams. He is behind Fonseca on the progress scale. He's had a lot of time out with injury. You're the one with the experience here that is ready to take this next step. It felt important that he did it. And he did.

40:56Catherine Whitaker: And he'd had some recent experience against young players, Hodder, Majedovic, where he had lost his way in those matches and he had almost looked like the younger, more inexperienced one. So for him to flip that and come out of this and do it in such thrilling fashion as well, like he didn't just get over the line in this one, he started playing the kind of tennis that we associate with him. Explosive, exciting. Some of the winners he was hitting in those closing stages were extraordinary. You know, even like great touch shots. There was one that he hit cross-court past Prismic, which was, you know, Alcaraz-esque in terms of controlling the ball at the end of a long sprint.

41:47Catherine Whitaker: Brilliant, brilliant hands to go with all the power. And the scenes on court 14. I mean, I went out there for Kostiuk, the match before, and suddenly you realise there's so many Brazil shirts in this crowd. They had taken their seat on that court for the, you know...

42:08Matt Roberts: Where there is no shade.

42:09Catherine Whitaker: No shade, blazing sun, just so they could be there for Fonseca. The dedication is amazing. And they were rewarded with that comeback by Fonseca. Very, very special scenes out there. And I'm, look, I've got no real preference in that match-up, but I am pleased we're getting Fonseca Djokovic. You know, we've seen Prismic Djokovic a couple of times and it continues this trend of Fonseca playing all these guys for the first time. Alcaraz, Sinner, Zverev. Now he gets Djokovic. I can't wait for that one.

42:44Matt Roberts: You've been so quiet on Fonseca this year, David. Is this the point at which you get loud?

42:51David Law: Apart from signing him up to my fancy team, ditching Taylor Fritz. Listen, I didn't watch much of this match because I was watching others. I do feel like Fonseca deserves and needs a little bit of grace, really, to just not have idiots like me hyping him up because he's won a couple of rounds. but look, he's about to play Novak Djokovic. If he wins that, we'll be hyping him up. I will.

43:22Matt Roberts: OK, see you in two days' time then. I suspect tonight's session match.

43:27David Law: Yes. I thought so. I think that would work a treat.

43:31Matt Roberts: Rafael Hodah, a winner today, just three hours and 22 for him over James Duckworth, 6-1, 6-7, 6-4, 7-5, more than twice the length of his round one match and it looked like this match was going to follow the same pattern as his round one match. He was in cruise control, 6-1. He was, you know, destroying all before him and then suddenly things got so ragged for him, loses that second set and a tyre break. He goes off court at the end of that and he was all over the place. He was panicking, I think. And for the rest of the match, his legs didn't look great. I mean, it's tremendous credit that he came through it.

44:12Matt Roberts: I think so.

44:13David Law: I think there are two sides to it. It was concerning that it didn't take that long for him to look like he was struggling. I came out onto that court when it was one set all and he was playing without a hat for a few minutes. He won't be doing that again because he went a breakdown and he looked like this could tailspin dramatically. And the fact that he managed to turn that around and win it in four sets, I think is net positive. because this is all a learning curve, but it's not the destruction that I feel like is his route through to the latter stages of this tournament because I don't think he's going to be grinding people into the dirt over five sets every day.

44:58Matt Roberts: Alex Mickelson next for Hodder, who came through Nishes Basavaredi in four sets today. Next up to talk about, this is a tough one, Jakub Mensik over Mariano Navone. I mean, the most extraordinary match, Mensik winning this 13-11 in the fifth set tie break. And on match point, he collapses to the ground in full body cramps. He's convulsing, he's writhing, he's crying out in pain. And he's there for several minutes doing this before any medical staff get to him. The footage, the clip is doing the rounds on social media. I think it's going to have a lot of cut through. It, you know, obviously a clip like that doesn't tell the whole story, but it's an incredibly distressing thing to see.

45:53Matt Roberts: This guy just sort of being left out there. And look, I know there can't be a physio standing by at courtside for every match all the time, but this match had gone on for four hours and 41 minutes and he'd been cramping for a while leading up to this. He explained in the post-match press conference that he'd got to the point in the match where he felt so ill from the heat, he couldn't take on any more fluids and electrolytes, or he'd have puked, quite frankly. And that then had a knock-on effect of him cramping towards the end of the match. I mean, unreal that he came through this. He had no legs at all in that tie-break.

46:35Matt Roberts: He had no backhand, and that's his best shot. Like, absolutely unreal. And he came to press afterwards. When the alert came through, Jakub Mensik is going to be in press in 20 minutes. We were all...

46:49David Law: What, in a wheelchair?

46:51Matt Roberts: ...deeply shocked. Well, he got up... He did end up with the assistance of medical staff, a lot of medical staff. He ended up walking off the court. But then once he got to courtside, he was put in a wheelchair to get back to the locker room. He was in a bad way. And look, he was... I mean, it sounds like he's been through a real trauma today. He wasn't playing that down, but he was backing himself to recover physically. He walked in, didn't he? He walked into the press. He said, even in the last two hours since I came off the court, I feel like I've done... I feel a world away from how I was two hours ago.

47:31Matt Roberts: I still think there's a big unknown in there for him about how he pulls up from this. But remarkable that he was as OK as he was because this was a troubling scene.

47:43Catherine Whitaker: This is a guy who has a really poor fifth set record. He's really struggled in long matches in the past, I think for a variety of reasons. So huge for him to have got through this one. But that scene at the end, I mean, I was over the other side of the grounds when this was all happening. But by the time I made my way to court six, well over five minutes had passed since the end of the match. And yet he was surrounded by ten or so medical staff, I would say, on hand. And then I saw him in that wheelchair and he had a huge ice pack on his head and he looked dazed. And yeah, it was it was a really troubling scene and not, you know, and the sort that we cannot normalize and we cannot just accept, you know.

48:45Matt Roberts: Or just go, that was extreme. Move on. This is happening.

48:50Catherine Whitaker: It's happening. Yeah, absolutely. and well Djokovic talked about it in his press today didn't he some sort of big picture things that the sport might be able to do you know like it's so hard seeing these players especially play five sets in this heat I honestly think it's way too much

49:14David Law: He was shocked that there was no heat rule wasn't he Djokovic?

49:19Matt Roberts: Yeah I mean and he was like well if it wasn't brought into effect today if today didn't trigger whatever measures they have in place then like whatever would like this is as extreme as you can imagine and whether being here in May you know this is absolutely wild what's happening and he couldn't believe that it wasn't possible for them to pull the roof over you know like they did in Australia during the Yannick's in a Elliot Spitzeri match okay I know there was a lot of like displeasure or suspicion about the manner in which that was deployed and the potential inconsistency of the rule but like I don't think anybody was taking issue with the measure existing for the health of these tennis players like I do not want this sport to look like the Hunger Games and sometimes it feels like again we're institutionalized to sort of celebrate it looking like the Hunger Games.

50:19Matt Roberts: It is possible to give Jakub Mensik a massive pat on the back for coming through that and also say he absolutely should not be coming through that. And who knows what knock-on effect that'll have on him. Tennis has a problem. And I think because it's so broad and wide-ranging and tennis's governance is so disparate and fractured and competing in its agendas that nobody's going to take responsibility for this big picture of a broken sport, quite frankly. Like, it is not what we saw today. And yes, it's extreme, but it's not abnormal. I expect to see this again this year. I wasn't expecting to see it here at the French Open, but we'll probably see it in New York.

51:14Matt Roberts: We might see it at Wimbledon. We had extremes at Wimbledon last year.

51:18David Law: No, it's not. It's not abnormal. And actually, I was interested to know about Djokovic. He said, look, I don't want it just for me. I don't want it just a roof on a court. I'm well aware that there are loads and loads of players on outside courts that don't have roofs, and I don't want them suffering either. But, you know, we need to have some sort of policy here. And obviously, they do have a heat rule policy where they delay two, three, four hours. and certainly in Australia we've had that, but it feels like we're sticking plasters on things at the moment rather than coming up with a policy and a strategy that says, OK, well, we've got the next four days, five days, really, really hot.

51:56David Law: Let's move the order of play until it's late and we can just play five hours on 17 courts.

52:03Matt Roberts: Yeah, I mean, step one is for the sport to agree there's a problem and that we don't want tennis players to be playing for four hours in extreme heat like this, right? It feels like we're not even there yet, let alone finding solutions. But, yeah, let's hope we edge closer to it after today. Alexander Zverev in the night session tonight. 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 over Thomas Mahatch, the not best player in the world. who would like to take this one?

52:39David Law: Well, I was in the press seats throughout the whole of this. I mean, I must admit, after a set and a half, I wasn't paying an enormous amount of attention because it was just uncompetitive. And listen, Alexander Zverev tonight was fantastic. He was clean, the way he came at him, the ball from the start. Mahatsch had a few flashes in the first set where you just thought he's clearly got the game to go toe-to-toe when he's at his best and trouble. Even Zverev at bits he had a break-back point, but it was just loose. He just then lost his serve at the start of the second set, immediately went three love down.

53:19David Law: He was complaining about some physical issues. That happens a lot with him. He just didn't look like he was that enthused to be out there at any stage of the night. and maybe big court occasions are just not for him because we know he can play really well, but he was not good tonight and Zverev was so, so comfortable.

53:40Matt Roberts: It's weird, isn't it, that the big occasions don't seem to be for him because he's such a Hollywood player. Like, you'd think he'd want as big a stage for that as possible, and maybe he does want it, but that doesn't mean he... Maybe he... Yeah, I don't know what's going on. Maybe he likes the idea of it and then he gets out there Stressed when he's out there? Freezes.

54:03Catherine Whitaker: Freezes every time. Yeah. I don't want to retire the bit, but I am going to stop using best player in the world, just for a while. Yeah, because we're starting to look a bit silly. I just need... It almost reinforces the bit, because the idea of it is that this guy on the outside court, you know, it's ironic, right? This guy on the outside court is amazing. and he's the best player in the world and then you put him on the big stage and he can't do it. But I'm getting a little bit frustrated and tired now of these sorts of performances. So I'm on a break, is what I'm saying. The bit lives, but I'm not going to be engaging with it for an indefinite period of time.

54:53Matt Roberts: Well, Zverev was retiring the bit against Thomas Bahatch on Chattere. Kaspar Rude was winning comfortably over Hamad Majedovic on Longland. He needed a comfortable win, did Kaspar Rude, after what happened a couple of days ago, the weirdness of that Sifulin match. And there did seem to be a bit of a reset for Rude tonight. He was in good shape physically. He's got Tommy Paul next, so I'd suspect he'll need to be in good shape physically for that one.

55:22David Law: Yeah, Tommy Paul's a really good player, and it's interesting, isn't it? I think Rude a little bit like Svitolina. They've come through these matches, and they're so good at just plotting their way through match to match now. Very experienced players, and Rude's right back on track. I mean, it's not going to get any cooler for the next few days. And Tommy Paul in the heat, I don't know. That's not a match you really want to have to play if it ends up in the heat of the day. but I do feel that he's weathered the worst of this.

55:58Matt Roberts: Andrei Ryblev a winner today. He will take on Nuno Borges next. A couple of weird slash funny stories to end on for part two, just like we did with part one. In part one, we had Tamara Korpach. In part two, we have coachless Alejandro Davidovic Fikina. Tell us about this weird turn of events, Matt.

56:22Catherine Whitaker: a weird turn of events to Davidovic Fakina himself, right? Like, he was not coachless at the start of this tournament. Mariano Puerta was his coach. The 2005 runner-up here at the French Open, who served a long drug span in his career, and has coached Christian Gareen and Brandon Nakashima. and yeah he was Alejandro Davidovic-Vikina's coach and he had that dramatic first round match that we talked about the other day against Demir Jumher and in his words they debriefed that match afterwards in a very normal way they then went their separate ways it sounds like Davidovic-Vikina did some more recovery and Puerta went back to the hotel and a few hours passed and the next thing Davidovic-Vikina knows is he's getting a very, very long text from Puerta saying he's done.

57:23Catherine Whitaker: He's out, he's not coaching him anymore, and he's flying back to Miami. Mid-tournament, with David Iovic-Vikina still going. Now, he was so confused in the press conference, like he was telling it and sort of nodding along as everyone was like, what are you, what is this tale you're telling? it doesn't make any sense he was like yeah I know it doesn't make any sense like in his version of events there was no dispute no sign at all that this was gonna be on the cards he he said I thought we had a really good relationship but he said as a person he has failed talking about Puerta there with how he has conducted himself and he says that he has talked to some other players and apparently according to according to Davinovic Fakina Puerta has done this with other players and he said, you know, it's my mistake maybe.

58:17Catherine Whitaker: Maybe I should have known that he was like this and shouldn't have hired him in the first place. He's also apparently blocked Davidovich Fikina and his wife on social media. Bloody hell. It is, I mean, I use that word unsettling. This was one of, I found this really unsettling. It's really weird and crazy and disturbing. And yeah, look, as I said, We've only got Davidovic Fikina's version there. I'm wary of that, but I did feel for him. Like, that is... Like, a guy he thought he had a really good relationship with, someone who was helping him, to then just leave him like that.

59:01Matt Roberts: Awful. It's been written up in the Times, and the headline is, my coach ghosted me between French Open matches and flew home. And that's about the size of it, isn't it? I've never heard anything like it. We do have a slightly more uplifting moment of the day to end part two on, David. Your reunion with the Dropshot Dragon. Yes.

59:26David Law: The Dropshot Dragon, who, let me remind you, is, was Albert Portas from Spain. He still is Albert Portas. Always will be. Yes. And he won the 2001 Hamburg tournament, the 1000 event at the time beating world number one Leighton Hewitt and then one Carlos Ferreira French Open champion in the final beat them back to back and I think he hit something like 50 drop shots over the course of the two matches and I used to be the ACP's communication manager at the time and I introduced him at his final press conference as the drop shot dragon Albert Portas your champion and that was a nickname I'd given to him because it was so devastating never seen the bloke since 25 years ago that is um and uh however he has been coaching for the last eight years Marco Trunjuliti and um and I and Trunjuliti's having the best period of his career he's finally got himself in the world's top 100 for the first time in his early 30s and today he played Karen Hatchinov an amazing match it went deep into the to to the trenches this one um and it looked like Hachinov was going to win.

1:00:39David Law: He was four love up in the set. Suddenly, Trondeliti comes back, wins six out the next seven games, hitting just an extraordinary number of drop shots along the way. And Albert Portas loving it in the front row. And in the end, Hachinov won. And I'd been planning, if Albert and Marco were triumphant, to see if I could just have a quick word with Albert, 25 years on. And, you know, given that he didn't win, I left him to it, you know, and I'm walking out. Suddenly he starts walking towards me. And, you know, he's passing the other way. And I thought, well, I won't. I won't. I won't interrupt it.

1:01:21David Law: You know. He stopped to talk to me. You're very memorable, David. And he shook my hand. He gave me a little hug. And he had a little chat. And he instigated a little chat about drop shots. And I said, do people still call you the drop shot dragon from time to time? And he says, well, you know, he says, you know, but, but, you know, he hits a lot of them, but actually hits too many of them. And, and he needs to learn how to cover it better.

1:01:48Matt Roberts: But he's been coaching him for eight years. I think he needs to take some responsibility for that.

1:01:53David Law: But he said it affectionately. I mean, look, he says he's got great hands, Marco. And, but it was great to see this guy. I didn't know him well, but, but you travel the world with these people in that role as communications person. and we just happened to share this extraordinary moment in his career and I gave him this daft nickname that I tried to make happen and it kind of did happen. And anyway, we got a little photo together today, so it was very nice for me.

1:02:21Matt Roberts: It's on our Instagram, and if you're bummed out by anything you've seen today, David's picture with the dropshot dragon is the antidote. I promise you that.

1:02:31Catherine Whitaker: Yeah, by far my favourite moment of the day. Can I also just, I know we're running long, but can I just, David, get your description, please, of the Hatchinov match point fail?

1:02:45David Law: Oh, my word. There were a couple of moments. One great moment where Hatchinov hit a lob and it hit the spider cam wire and he lost the point as a result of that. And then he's worked his way into match point. He's pulling his hair out trying to get rid of Trunjeliti from this draw. Finally hammers his forehand, gets a short overhead to hit away, smacks it into the corner. Somehow Trunjoliti gets to it again, lifts it high up into the sky, but he can barely clear the net. It's just dropped over the net. Bounces up for Hachinov to put away, and suddenly Trunjoliti, out of nowhere, just starts sprinting towards him, and Hachinov top edges the smash into the crowd on match point.

1:03:25David Law: Never seen anything like it.

1:03:28Catherine Whitaker: I mean, thank God for Hachinov's sake that he went on to win this match, because I don't know how you would have recovered from not winning that point.

1:03:40Matt Roberts: Scenes. Absolute scenes. That's it for part two. We'll be back in part three to look ahead to tomorrow and award a slightly underwhelming musketeer of the day. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. That's why it's no surprise that more than 85 % of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows and AI, connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.

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1:04:59Matt Roberts: Welcome back to part three of today's tennis podcast. What a lot of ground we have covered already. We still have to award Musketeer of the day. There is only one contender and it is Conte-Alys and he beat another Frenchman. So it's a little bit underwhelming because we have tried to discount Frenchmen that beat other Frenchmen. But Alice is all we have. He beat Ugo Embert in three straight sets and we have no choice but to give him Muscataro the day. He'll take on Alexander Zverev in two days' time to try and win it again.

1:05:33David Law: He is having a sneaky good year, Alice. He's somebody I've never really been particularly moved by, if I'm honest. But he beat Embert in straight sets today. and he's very matter of fact, Elise. Whereas Humber was complaining in the press comments about it being too noisy. But Elise seemed happy enough with it. But, you know, Elise, a little bit agricultural, by the way, and actually played, Alexander's very, very early this year, two tie-break sets. Very close match.

1:06:06Matt Roberts: Having said earlier, we all slam dunk said that Djokovic-Fonseca would be the night session match. prime might want the French player at night. They might want Zorara Valise. Maybe there will be more of a discussion to be had about what is in the night session. Speaking of night sessions, let's look ahead to tomorrow and there is one big headline from the day five order of play and that is that Matt Roberts knows the mind of Amelie Maresmo.

1:06:36Catherine Whitaker: It's worrying, isn't it? How so? In what way?

1:06:39Matt Roberts: Well, because Yannick Sinner is in the day session tomorrow. He takes on Juan Manuel Sorungelo first up and in the night session, as predicted by Matt Roberts, are Torinda Kinesh against Matteo Berrettini. Yep.

1:06:58Catherine Whitaker: I mean, if that's your thing, then enjoy the night session tomorrow. Look, I think the most interesting part of that is Sina playing in the day and playing first, which I find interesting. I imagine that there have been some conversations there and I imagine he thought, well, the first up is the worst, is the best slot in the day in terms of heat. And I think he's right.

1:07:26David Law: Yeah, it's due to be 27 degrees when that match starts as opposed to 30... I mean, still full sun. What did you walk past today in the afternoon?

1:07:35Matt Roberts: 38 at 2pm. Yeah.

1:07:39David Law: Says it all.

1:07:39Matt Roberts: I mean, it's not going to be nice. He's not going to like it. No. But it is the best lot of the three.

1:07:45David Law: Maybe he's a morning person.

1:07:46Matt Roberts: Isn't it? In our predictions challenge, a number of us, well, the three of us, obviously, and lots of fun people taking part in our French Open predictions this year, there are 1 ,000 points on offer for Yannick Sinner to lose this match in straight sets. Just for context, David, how many points did you get for Jasmine Paolini losing today?

1:08:11David Law: 16.

1:08:13Matt Roberts: 16. Like several orders of magnitude difference. I don't think anyone's gone for it.

1:08:23Catherine Whitaker: I think someone might have gone for Sinner to lose in four. Right. Which was 400 points. Reggie, right? I don't think it was Reggie, actually. I can't remember what Reggie's pick was. Find out in the newsletter.

1:08:37Matt Roberts: Find out in the newsletter, folks. Was it Jim Parsons? I'll whiz you through the rest. I mean, actually, maybe the headline of the day in terms of tomorrow's order of play is Anne Lee against Diane Parry on Chatrier.

1:08:49Catherine Whitaker: It's giving Priscilla Hanivajovic on labour, isn't it?

1:08:52Matt Roberts: Yeah, that's when I'll be having lunch.

1:08:56Catherine Whitaker: Good player, Anne Lee.

1:08:57Matt Roberts: You've got to eat.

1:08:59Catherine Whitaker: True.

1:08:59Matt Roberts: You've got to pick your moments. We're just trying to survive. Irina Savalenko against Elsa Giacomo is third on the day session tomorrow. And then Rindeknesh Berrettini in the night session. Longland starts with Vallejo against Moise Kouam. I believe it's Kouam. We had a notification that there's no acute accent on the E. He doesn't have one of those audio files on his ATP bio yet because he's so young and inexperienced. but I believe that's the correct pronunciation. We'll try and get confirmation. David will go and do some loitering with some French journos.

1:09:37David Law: I'll go and have a chat with Julian, my mate.

1:09:39Matt Roberts: Yeah, there we go. Amanda Enissimova is second on Longland against Yulia Grabher. Coco Goff and Maya Sharif third on. Ben Shelton, Rafael Collignon fourth on. Mathieu tomorrow, Vekic against De Sarka first up. Sarundolo Gaston, the other Sarundolo, I should say, the better Sarundolo, the 25th seed against Hugo Gaston. Felix Auger-Aliassime against Roman Burrachaga and Victoria Mboko taking on Katerina Siniakova. Flavio Caboli's on court seven tomorrow. Jovic Navarro opens court 14. Luka Van Asch, David's favourite, last on court seven tomorrow. Van Asch, Nakashima, David.

1:10:21David Law: Can't wait.

1:10:22Matt Roberts: What did you say about Alice just now? Never moved you.

1:10:26David Law: No, but I'm getting there. Right. With him.

1:10:30Matt Roberts: He's on a journey. Arnaldi Sitsapas. I'm not so sure about Van Asch yet. A couple of years ago, we'd have been really excited about Arnaldi Sitsapas. We'll see. Maybe it'll rock our worlds. That is all tomorrow, folks. We'll be back at the end of it with another probably bumper tennis podcast. It's been such a frenzy day. I have not posted any Bashir content on our Instagram, for which I apologise to our followers because whose day is not enhanced by Bashir content. looking so serene and put together, which is just not a vibe that I can relate to right now. The handsomest cat in all of the world.

1:11:07Matt Roberts: Hello to Bodie, Maisie and Roger, our mascots. Hello to Greg, Chris and Geoff, our executive producers. Matt, let's have some shout-outs.

1:11:16Catherine Whitaker: We have Catherine Higgins from Fleet, Hampshire. Hi, Catherine.

1:11:21Matt Roberts: Hello, Catherine Higgins. Church and pew? Well, same church.

1:11:25Catherine Whitaker: Yeah, different pew.

1:11:26Matt Roberts: OK. Which pew?

1:11:28Catherine Whitaker: Quite a different pew. A Y? A K and a Y? A K.

1:11:32Matt Roberts: K, okay. Yeah.

1:11:35Catherine Whitaker: And an A in the middle.

1:11:38Matt Roberts: Catherine, oh, okay. Someone sent me a great TikTok the other day about all the different types of Catherine and what they're like. It actually really wasn't applicable to me, but I did get a kick out of it. Catherine, send me your Instagram handle and I'll forward on the link. Thank you, Catherine.

1:12:03Catherine Whitaker: And Catherine would also like us to shout out her 19-year-old black cat, Jellybean.

1:12:09Matt Roberts: Consider it done, Catherine.

1:12:11Catherine Whitaker: I'm a Jellybean. We also have Brian Barker.

1:12:15Matt Roberts: Hello, Brian.

1:12:16Catherine Whitaker: Hi, Brian. From Homewood, Illinois.

1:12:21Matt Roberts: Matt will be in Illinois in a couple of weeks

1:12:23David Law: There was a tennis player called Brian Baker Remember Brian Baker?

1:12:28Matt Roberts: I do remember Brian Baker

1:12:29Catherine Whitaker: Just one letter different Very good And Brian will be thrilled with that Because he said please not the Brian brothers

1:12:36David Law: Well you see I'm a man of many options Brian

1:12:42Matt Roberts: Look out for Matt when he comes to Illinois

1:12:46Catherine Whitaker: Yes You look a bit overwhelmed

1:12:49Matt Roberts: At the mention of Illinois

1:12:50Catherine Whitaker: Look, let's cross that bridge when we come to it. It's been on the schedule for a while, and right now I'll have a nice time when I'm there. Brian says, although I'm roughly David's age, and all things considered, we should be friends. 35, are you, Brian? I fear we will be mortal enemies. I'm an Agassi guy.

1:13:09David Law: I don't know. I've come around to Agassi. David from the 90s, Brian, really wasn't into Agassi. In fact, hoped he would lose every single match he played. but David of the 2020s has come around to it. It's just a bit late, isn't it?

1:13:26Matt Roberts: There you go, Brian. You are mates with David.

1:13:28David Law: Yeah.

1:13:30Catherine Whitaker: And finally, we have Sofia Moniz Galval from Lisbon, Portugal. Sofia is big on the barge. Oh, for sure she is. I know Sofia. And I met Sofia at the Davis Cup in Malaga.

1:13:47Matt Roberts: Hey! On the barge today, somebody posted a picture of their dog with a dinosaur toy and a sad caption about Dino no longer soaring. It was just peak content. Good things happening on the barge, folks.

1:14:04Catherine Whitaker: And Sophia says, I'd like to dedicate my shout out to the amazing community of fellow barges, especially Catherine, same church, same pew, Duffy. thanks to whom I will go to Wimbledon for the first time this year and with all the other day three barges I believe there's a big barge Wimbledon meet up happening on day three whom I cannot wait to meet

1:14:28Matt Roberts: Get on the barge, join them That is wonderful Wonderful note to end today's show on What a show it has been We're going to all go and Lie down Rock back and forth for a bit and then we'll bounce back for tomorrow yeah come on uh we're part of the athletic podcast network thank you for listening let's do day five and we'll speak to you after it

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