Talking ‘Changeover’ and the Alcaraz-Sinner Rivalry with Giri Nathan

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1:41Matt Roberts: Well, hello and welcome to the Tennis Podcast, a very special, very unique episode of the Tennis Podcast. Today, we'll be back with our normal show tomorrow, Tuesday, to talk about the finals and the final few days of Cincinnati. That show will be recorded live in New York at 4pm Eastern Time, 9pm UK time. So do join us on YouTube if you fancy it. It'll of course be up as a podcast soon afterwards as well. But to satisfy your tennis taste buds until then, Matt and I are bringing you a special show with a special guest, Giri Nathan, one of our very favourite tennis writers. Giri is a staff writer and co-founder at Defecta Media.

2:22Matt Roberts: He's also someone we've been lucky enough to spend some time with at a few Grand Slams over the past couple of years. And most importantly, for the purposes of today, he's the author of Changeover, a new book documenting and contextualizing the young rivalry between Carlos Alcaraz and Yannick Sinner. The book comes out tomorrow, Tuesday, in the US. I'm going to do a sort of breakfast TV presentory thing and hold it up to the camera for anybody that's watching. here we are I love the aesthetic by the way I'm really big fan of you yeah the designers are wonderful shouldn't judge a book by the cover but I do and and uh I love it very much um so yeah the book comes out tomorrow Tuesday in the US and Thursday September the 11th in the UK so Giri thank you very much for being here today I'm sure this is a pretty crazy time how are you finding the whirlwind of book promo?

3:19I think it's good that you're catching me at the early end of it. It's not like I'm Carlos Alcaraz in indoor hardcore season. I'm still fresh. My mind is ready to engage with you guys. And it's lovely to speak with you in particular, because I feel like we witnessed some of the events in this book together, including the Jack Traper vomit

3:41Matt Roberts: incident of 2024 yes we did we have trauma bonded that's right um and some something else you and i have in common giri is uh september the 8th 2022 um which is where the book starts uh and the match the incredible u.s open match between yannick sinner and carlos alcaraz won six three in the third by Al Kraz after saving match point, five hours, 15 minutes, finished at 2.50 in the morning. I too made a bad decision that night. And I too missed the opportunity to watch that match live in the stadium. The smug man also on our screens, Matt Roberts, he made the right decision that night. I made the wrong one.

4:31Matt Roberts: So I really feel your pain. But you describe it in the book, You said, Rufal on my sofa, I resolved never to miss another match between these two if I was within a 500-mile radius. Have you stayed true to that promise to yourself? I have. I have. If they do meet in Cincinnati, I am going to need to measure some distances precisely and potentially buy some plane tickets. But so far, I've stayed true to that promise. But that match was, yeah, definitely the initial seed where I got the idea for the book. and that profound feeling of regret of being on the train headed in the wrong direction and streaming those incredible rallies on my phone.

5:14It's like, this book is sort of my penance for missing that match, you could say.

5:19Catherine Whitaker: And you had an amazing line, I felt, describing that match and your feelings of watching it. You said you no longer feared the future because, you know, you talk in the book about how you'd maybe got hyped for a lot of other guys after the big three, big four era, and they hadn't quite been it. What was it about that match that you saw on that night that really made you realize that these guys were going to be the future that we could all get really excited about? What was it you saw? Yeah, I think a lot of it was also their trajectories leading up to that point, but also just the quality of the rallies, I think.

6:01and in particular the quality of those rallies in insanely pressured moments in the match. Sinner's ball striking is the kind of thing that just leaps out at any tennis fan when they see it. I think it was on maximum display in that match, and it was contrasted nicely with Alcarez's ridiculous variety of shots, including that behind-the-back one, that mid-air passing shot, which I'll never forget, and was sort of the shot that kind of blasted him into wider consciousness, I think, along with that whole U.S. Open run. But those rallies were unlike anything I'd seen between any other pair of players who were kind of coming up on the tour.

6:44I think you could look at a lot of different ways, just the depth, the spin, but also the angles and the improvisation. I think they were clearly both comfortable in a variety of challenging court positions, whereas some of the players we'd seen come up, Yermedvedev, Yerzverev, had more obvious limits and certain patterns that they like to stick to. But, you know, this was pure, spectacular tennis for almost five hours and five hours and change, if I remember correctly. So I think as a whole spectacle, it was just this has to be the future. That was kind of my takeaway from it.

7:30Matt Roberts: We'll come back to Medvedev because he kind of gets a chapter, doesn't he? He gets a very generous treatment in the book. yeah um were you looking for a subject for a book were you were you waiting for inspiration to come along yeah I'd been writing about tennis for I don't know five or so years when this idea took shape and I think I was just waiting for something that I was excited enough about to fuel an entire book's worth of writing and I love the idea of structuring a book around a rivalry. You know, Levels of the Game is a classic of tennis writing, and it was a matter of finding the right one to latch on to, and then watching that match, and then the next year that played out, I started to feel that Yannick Sinner was closing the gap with Carlos Alcarez, and that maybe this would be worth hanging a whole book on.

8:28But it was, I love rivalry as a framing device for a book because with a dual profile, you get a built-in kind of foil. So there's contrast in playing style and temperament. And it just so happens that these guys contrast very satisfyingly. And there's a lot of little details you can draw out over the course of a book. So, yeah, rivalry was kind of the thing I wanted to write about.

8:54Catherine Whitaker: And we'll get stuck into some Sinner specifics and some Alcaraz specifics just to just to sort of zoom out a little bit to start with. Obviously, as you said, there's the there's the thread of rivalry through the whole book. But it's also kind of the story of the 2024 tennis season. And, you know, you touch on a lot of the other stuff that happened in that season as well, like the bee incident in Indian Wells. I was so glad that that got a lot of a lot of coverage in this book. of course, of the Rome water bottle incident with Novak Djokovic. You've got some reflections on Nadal at Roland Garros in there and the Olympics, of course.

9:32Catherine Whitaker: So it's, you know, for anyone looking for a kind of document of what was a really interesting men's tennis season in 2024, it's all in here. Just wondering, like, can you just take us into your writing process? You know, you were at some of these events, you weren't at some of them. How did you go about putting this book together and how did your writing process differ when you were at an event versus when you were not? I'm always just so interested in writers' processes, I suppose. Definitely. I think one thing I really enjoy writing about is travel and trying to capture all the different locales where pro tennis goes down all around the world.

10:15and travel is also just a very central and arduous part of a tennis player's life so I tried to give a little bit of the flavor of each of these stops and in terms of my own planning I definitely wanted to hit the major tournaments and there's a bit of a kind of luck built into any sort of travel planning around tennis because you don't know if the characters are interested in following narratively are going to flame out in the first round and and if they do is that going to be in an interesting fashion as as in the case of carlos at cincinnati last year uh with the racket smash but i i basically tried to be as close to as much of the action as i kind of feasibly could within my travel budget and where i couldn't be there i could rely on the lovely uh panopticon that is social media to capture all these little moments uh that i just found that that's it's a very modern resource that a writer gets to draw on where you have these clips from kind of the training areas at the tournaments and little clips from instagram live that are have been recirculated and you have you can actually build this composite portrait of what's going on in these players lives even if you weren't there you know 10 feet away to witness it firsthand so i think um there are some challenging things about writing about the modern game um but there are also some interesting new wrinkles to you know having this technology at our hands and getting to see the players in moments where you might not otherwise be able to uh have captured that for posterity so um that's kind of my strategy for it does that mean i mean it sounds like social media

12:00Matt Roberts: was was something you were pretty across during the writing process yeah i mean you kind of infiltrated the fandoms i did i did um i think one of the most useful things i collected over the course of the book was just like a running document of every funny incident or meme or kind of catastrophizing uh carlito's fan base post uh just i wanted the book to feel as though it's coming from the perspective of a fan and someone who's coming at it with the eagerness and enthusiasm as a fan. So I wanted to draw on fan perception in real time. So I think there is a sense in which sports books can get caught up in a certain self-seriousness and reverence about the subject matter, particularly when it's at the end of an athlete's career.

12:50But since I was capturing these guys basically at the launch phase of the career, I think there's actually a lot of awkwardness and goofiness and joy that happens in those early phases. They're trying to figure out how to be this global superstar and they're kind of growing up in real time so I think that's why some of the memes and and some of the the pure fun that surrounds these two on social media was was kind of fun and kind of informative for me to document as I was writing I think you've been

13:20Matt Roberts: really successful in that like tonally tonally it does feel a bit different to to a lot of similar ish sort of sports books in terms of topics and yeah I really enjoyed that element of it thank Thank you.

13:33Catherine Whitaker: When you say kind of irreverence, there's some really laugh out loud, funny descriptions of the sort of various other characters that you bring in. There's a very funny line about Mute and a mouse and a pantry that I'm sure readers will enjoy. We mentioned Medvedev. Let's just maybe go there quickly now. Why did you decide to include a whole chapter on Daniel Medvedev? Why is he a guy that you like so much and is worthy of a whole chapter in this book. So I think he absolutely is, but I'm just curious from your perspective. I first find him one of the most compelling talkers in tennis. So I think that's what really captured me as his personality is what took me in.

14:21And then I realized he is sort of this tragic comic figure on the ATP where he's immensely talented in his own right, but he's also trapped, kind of pinned between these two really legendary generations, or one we can confirm to be legendary and one that's shaping up to be. And he did manage to sneak in his one major title, which I think will make him stand out as an interesting little anomaly once we zoom out and look at this era perhaps a decade from now. But I also just love what a contrast he is in personality to what a quote-unquote tennis great is at the time in this modern era. And he has kind of bristled at the civility and the grace with which the big three have conducted themselves and which it seems like Carlos and Janik are mostly conducting themselves to.

15:21he has just really been himself at every single second of his tennis career and that has led to some catastrophic moments and some hilarious moments and some really oddly insightful moments even when he just reflects on the tour in an offhand way and walks you through little tactical details in a match or reflects on his colleagues and what's unique about their games and I just and he has his own blind spots which I think you guys have spoken about really insightfully on the podcast before too but I as a whole I just find him such an interesting witness to the modern ATP and having seen the big three you know now subside mostly and seeing these new two rise up I just think he's a wonderful the best possible observer commentator we could ask for

16:11Matt Roberts: it's it's kind of whilst trying to remain as objective as possible it's kind of a shame for us that he's losing his relevance isn't it like he's no longer a staple on on media day because he's not so relevant at the top of the sport but you kind of still want to get him in just to exactly exactly quiz him about his his observations on on the rest of the sport um i i think just before we get into some specifics on on each each of the players and and all of that i feel like we have to ask about the elephant in the room which is their their two grandson finals they've played they've played this summer um so those aren't covered those aren't covered in the book yeah um is there any frustration to that like how did you feel watching like i totally understand that you had to put an end point on this right you could have kept putting it off kept putting it off and ended up publishing it once they were both retired how did you feel once the Roland Garros final was set and how did you feel watching it and how did you feel after it I I think it was really healthy for me and my editor to decide to put just 20 the end of the 2024 season as kind of the the frame of the book and we kind of knew that there was going to be this infinite treadmill otherwise of just trying to keep up with all their accomplishments.

17:40We definitely didn't know just how spectacular that those slam finals were going to be this summer. And doubling my frustration, I was also on parental leave over the summer. So I wasn't writing as much and I kind of wasn't able to like, I don't know, metabolize that tennis match the way I normally would. So there was a feeling of, man, I really would love to document this too, but the way I've been coping in my head is we can roll it into the paperback edition or into the sequel. So these guys will give us plenty of fodder over the coming years. So I think I had to be okay treating 2024 as kind of the framing device of the book, and we'll check in with them another time if I'm so lucky.

18:32Matt Roberts: They're going to keep writing sequels for you for the next decade. Lucky you. It looks like it. We'll see.

18:39Catherine Whitaker: And it did feel like that match, obviously the Roland Garros final in particular, was so big and reached so many people that hopefully more people will be drawn to the book as a result of it, even if it's not actually covered in the book, I suppose, as well. Yeah. Just to focus on Sinner for a little bit. We talked about your writing process. And I imagine there was quite a big moment in the 2024 season where suddenly, you know, you had a whole new chapter and you were looking at Sinner through a different lens. And obviously that's the moment that his doping violation becomes public. Can you tell the story of the day that you had, you know, being in the airport with Yannick Sinner when he found out.

19:32Catherine Whitaker: What was that like for you? Yes, it was a pretty surreal day. I was sort of frantically trying to read the ITIA report in the car to the airport. And then, lo and behold, I'm on one of those little people movers that I look over and I see Yannick Sinner, Darren Cahill, and Simone Vignazzi eating Italian food. in the Cincinnati airport. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, this is got to be one of the worst days of this man's professional career. But I am just absolutely fascinated to know what how he's acting at this moment, you know, what's the vibe at this table. So I kind of observe them for a bit.

20:21And then I decide to approach them. I've been talking to Yannick in press conferences all week, so I should be a somewhat familiar face. And yeah, I just, I tried to just kind of assess the vibes at that table, and they were certainly kind of muted, but not paranoid or not, you know, closed off. Yannick was still taking photos with fans who happened to notice him in the airport. They were enjoying a couple a couple pizzas with prosciutto and a panini sandwich as well. And I just thought to myself, I'm going to, you know, respectfully keep a distance, but I am going to just keep observing what I can.

21:09And I almost comically kept running into him over the next few hours. Like I'd see him again when I was boarding the plane. He was on the very first row, kind of gave him a grim little nod and I saw him again at baggage claim in New York City a couple hours later but I tried to weave some of that firsthand observation of this very strange day in Yannick Sinner's life into the end of that that Cincinnati chapter because I was just kind of lucky to stumble into this vantage point.

21:38Matt Roberts: Trying to trying to get a sense of how much that whole episode affected Yannick Senna is quite difficult I think and I've been maybe starting to have starting to evolve my thoughts on how it might have affected him this week as a result of watching him in Cincinnati because he suddenly looks so light and free on the court even more so than he did over the summer maybe he just loves being in Cincinnati I don't know but I'm starting to wonder if maybe the fact that he won he won two grand slams during during that period he won the next two grand slams after that that the doping violation became public whether that kind of was a fig leaf for how much it did affect him emotionally and away from the tennis court maybe he is just one of the world's great compartmentalizers like in hindsight now what is your sense of how affected he was by it all it's it's it's a case where I'm really grateful to have my kind of uh contemporaneous notebooks from that season because I have a lot of uh observations where just like Cincinnati last year the vibe in the center camp is is very odd um he's not really looking at his coaches he's he's looking extremely kind of morose and almost sickly in between points and going back and understanding what was actually happening during that time.

23:16His last hearing for the initial ITA ruling was during the tournament. He had like a six-hour Zoom call during the tournament. So he kind of knew this was hanging over him like the Sword of Damocles. And no matter how well he did the tournament, he went on to win it. he kind of knew he would have to reckon with this reality at the weekend. And I think it was, I try to set it up in the book as, you know, there are these moments where we see Yannick kind of visibly, physically unhappy, including the Wimbledon quarterfinal against Medvedev, where, you know, he has that brief medical incident, and he's taken off the court, and he just looks quite pale.

24:00I try to take those moments and set them up narratively so that if a reader's coming to this in a decade and they don't know the story's not at top of mind, I kind of let these moments play out and then bring in the explanation at the point in the season when we found out. So it's kind of like, okay, this fills in. This information helps explain some of the sort of mystery unhappy Yannick Sinner over the course of the season. Because that's really how it felt to process, you know, the news in real time. It was like, as soon as that happened, I'm like, oh man, he was talking about like sleepless nights in Wimbledon.

24:39He was talking about, you know, the feeling of foreboding and also the feeling of, you know, I'm quite unhappy because this process is playing out, but I can't actually talk about it to anyone. And even though I'm winning and having this historic season and people are asking me in the locker room like what's up man like you seem a little down I can't actually explain that to anyone so I think the loneliness of that moment really came through to me when I was able to take a step back and just look at look at the totality of it when I was writing the book yeah that's really interesting because when I was reading the book I was wondering whether you were gonna talk about the doping

25:22Catherine Whitaker: violation you know towards the start of the book because it's obviously one of the one of the main headlines of the season but I think it's I think it's a really good choice that you made to to sort of play it out in real time exactly as you say and yeah in the book we experience how we experienced it during the season which I think is which I think is really uh interesting um just wondering generally what you make of Sinner's decision to rehire Ferrara you describe in the book that you think his having the Klosterball on him was an elementary mistake, I think are the words that you use in the book.

25:57Catherine Whitaker: So what was your reaction when you found out that he'd rehired him? It actually added another layer of confusion because I still find the fact that he brought the Klosterball containing spray on a work trip seems quite avoidable mistake. And there are any number of topical cut creams for personal use that someone could bring that won't get your player in trouble with doping authorities, but with cross-contamination. But it is this interesting contrast between Yannick Sinner as the ultimate no-nonsense business-like character, and then this sort of strange swirl of chaos that does surround him.

26:46And the rehiring of Ferrara. I guess the way you can make sense of it is that, you know, they're kind of shunting all the blame onto Naldi as the one who made the critical error of actually applying the spray and, you know, and then administering the massage. And I suppose if Yannick believes enough in Ferrara to bring him back on, then he doesn't think that it was such an error to bring the spray on a work at all but I guess that's just a difference of opinion between me and Yannick Sinner I know I wouldn't want to be even in the vicinity of something like that having now seen what a what a what woes it can cause you as a tennis player last couple sort of specifically on on Yannick Sinner obviously sort of the the the inception of the book comes you know around the

27:37Matt Roberts: time of that 2022 or at the time of that 2022 US Open meeting Al Kraz goes on to win that US Open it takes Yannick Sinner a while for him to reach a level footing in that rivalry in terms of becoming Grand Slam champion in a and a world number one obviously once he did he you know once the floodgates opened he he couldn't stop he can't stop but a passage here that that Matt's picked out, sort of capturing the incredible levelling up he had from 2023 to 2024. By September 2023, given the same set of facts, a tennis fan could tell two stories about the 22-year-old Yannick Sinner. The more pessimistic Reid, a solid top 10 player who thrived in the best-of-three set format, had middling head-to-head records against elite peers and struggled with his stamina and late-game exposure in best-of-five.

28:32Matt Roberts: A more optimistic read, the heaviest hitter on tour, a technical marvel who just needed to build up his body and serve, and then he had seized multiple major titles. There was no real consensus. Now, obviously, we know which of those reads ended up being the right one. But truthfully, at the time, which side were you on? yeah and i can't claim to be a good tennis talent scout because i've praised many false messiahs on the atp in years past but i do think i saw something in sinner with the ball striking just seemed to be the bit that you cannot teach and i felt that he could physically make up the gap in time.

29:17He was still very young at that time. And I just, I was willing to bet on him closing that gap so much so that I was, you know, willing to hang this book idea on the idea that he would close that gap. So I think with Carlos, it was a much clearer kind of classic prodigy arc where he was extremely successful at previous levels of tennis and won his first ATP match as a 16-year-old. And with Yannick, it was more a bet on certain technical aspects of his game and his general temperament and just thinking that he would be able to work out sort of the stamina points and the conditioning points. And some of those head-to-heads against Zverev and the Titsipas of the world would even out over time or tip in his favor and then i what i couldn't have predicted was just how fast it all happened so that's credit to yannick sinner of course did you find yourself

30:19Matt Roberts: rooting for him in slams like i've got a book writing on this yannick come on i at some point it was like uh these guys were getting these two were getting too carried away with the theme of the book and if they could relax and let someone else have a have a shot at one of these slams but But yeah, I think there's always a moment as a sports writer where there are certain narrative rooting interests where maybe you're no longer a fan, but you are interested in telling stories of a certain shape. And in this case, I was definitely interested in Yannick Sinner closing the gap to Carlos Alcaraz, for sure.

30:54Catherine Whitaker: Just last one on Sinner before we move on to Alcaraz a bit. Something that comes up in the book, which I thought was really interesting, is kind of how he's viewed and perceived in Italy. You kind of set up this contrast where I think you encountered a journalist who said that he'd rather sleep than watch Yannick Sinner matches and you describe a sort of takedown article that was written in one of the Italian papers but then you contrast that with your own experience in Turin and seeing and hearing the love for Yannick Sinner And I know Catherine has felt that as well at that tournament. What's your take on it?

31:36Catherine Whitaker: Sort of how is Sinner perceived now, do you think, in Italy? You know, he kind of seems to be everywhere, you know, with a lot of sponsors. And, like, is he a really big deal in Italy? He was absolutely inescapable from the moment I landed in Turin. uh he is on i didn't you know at first i thought oh maybe it's just because it's the atp finals now and and they're really drumming it up but i realized he was kind of on every surface in public life that sells things to people you could find yannick center on billboards on little uh you know bus stands on my phone screen there's always yannick center and uh I asked some of the local journalists to give me a bit of the feel for how he's perceived locally.

32:33And they showed me some kind of sketch comedy that makes fun of him. Two aspects I remember them teasing him for was kind of his slightly Germanic accent in Italian. And then also the fact that he would be interrupting himself mid-sentence to advertise some product or another. so and I think one of the Italian journalists asked him if he was aware of that uh you know that sketch at in Turin and he kind of grimly acknowledged that he he had seen it um but sinner is absolutely everywhere I'd walk into a pizzeria the owner would be trying to talk to me about Yannick sinner uh and I think there is something very captivating to me about this native German speaker from this northern province in Italy coming to be this central pop cultural figure in the country.

33:27And I think along the way, at least among the older generation, that article that I cite in the book, I think there was a bit of resistance from a more conservative set who had an idea of what the canonically Italian tennis star should look like. and that writer Giancarlo Dotto describes, you know, feeling a different kind of passion for the Lorenzo Musetti tennis that he cannot quite muster for Yannick Sinner. And, you know, with trying to capture the rise of these players, I also want to capture sort of the strange moments of cultural pushback that they might face from a more conservative generation, let's say.

34:09So that's one theme that I was trying to get at.

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36:34Matt Roberts: With Alcaraz, I think you described there a moment ago the more traditional prodigy arc that he had from very early in his career. You talked about struggling to realise how good he actually was and this incredible paragraph about how the usual trade-offs that apply to tennis players or any athletes really just didn't seem to apply to him and how kind of befuddling that was to get your eyes and your your head around could you just talk us through that kind of journey you went on with yeah with Carlos Alcaraz to try and like understand him as an athlete yeah I think uh all credit to the kind of dogged watchers of uh of junior tennis and and uh challenger tennis who kind of spotted Alcaraz as this next big thing, even before I had the chance to watch.

37:30I think I only started watching him more closely once. I watched his match in Rio, which was his first ATP win. And then from there on, I was kind of keeping tabs on him. But with Carlos, I had this feeling that I'd been fooled before by the supposed next big thing on the ATP. And I had seen these three guys hold on to their hegemony of over men's tennis for quite a long time. So you really had to bowl me over to convince me this time. And he did indeed do that in a pretty immediately charismatic and almost hard to process way. Watching Carlos Zajacaraz, you think that I've never seen any player attempt these sorts of shots.

38:18Certainly not a teenage player attempting these sorts of shots. And I was reminded of a very brief, basically 90-second conversation one-on-one I had with Roger Federer at one point where he was like, I want to see these guys come to net and really do it with the conviction that they can end points there. Not just do it because their coach told them to, but just do it with that full intensity and that authority that Roger himself epitomized. So I think seeing Carlos do that at such this, at this kind of embryonic phase in his career was so shocking to me that I wasn't really sure if it would last, if it would just kind of a flash in the pan thing.

39:05But then I kept watching and kept watching. And I think it was the Miami run where it just finally was unavoidable you know this guy really is gifted in a very rare way and he does have this well-roundedness where I think of tennis players as having trade-offs as you said as you know you might be an excellent server but perhaps you'll be a little unwieldy on return because you're probably a little taller or maybe you're more comfortable playing a counter-punching style and you can't quite assert yourself in the baseline rallies but we see this kid kind of morph as the situation demands into so many different styles of tennis player and it's something that i remember seeing a little bit in djokovic at times in his career too and i think that adaptability is was what was so kind of captivating about watching early carlos and will remain a defining feature of his tennis going forward you kind of never know which Carlos Alcaraz you're going to sit down to watch on any given day.

40:07Catherine Whitaker: Yeah, and we've kind of been wondering whether Alcaraz is going to ever end up being as efficient as Yannick Sinner in matches. We've even seen it in Cincinnati this week, where Sinner, his first tournament in a while, he just wins his first match very straightforwardly. Whereas Alcaraz takes a more long-winded route to win his first match. And there was one passage from the book that really stood out to me when thinking about that. When you write that, with Alcarez, you get the sense that if there were no crowd, there would be no point to all of this. His trade is tennis, but it's also spectacle.

40:47Catherine Whitaker: He never looks happier when working a stadium into a froth of awe and glee. His tennis alone does most of the work for the fans, but he likes to embellish his genius with small gestures. And I just think that element of him combined with what you've described there about the way he can morph his game and all that kind of stuff, depending on the situation. Do you think all of that is compatible with really straightforward dominant winning? Or do you think Alcaraz is always going to be this guy who's playing the sorts of matches that we sort of typically see him play with ups and downs? I do think it's the kind of thing that might level itself off over the course of his career, but I selfishly hope it doesn't because it's quite captivating to watch as someone who likes to see tennis matches where the outcome feels uncertain.

41:42But a big question I was trying to figure out was how central a motivating factor is the entertainment thing for Al Karaz? Is it really at the core of what makes him want to get out on a tennis court? And naturally, he's asked about it over the course of the entire season. He's still asked about it to this day. And I found it quite consistent with his answers were basically yes. I sometimes get caught up on the court trying to hit shots that are going to delight people rather than trying to end the match in a clinical fashion and i think that is a just very powerful resource to draw on and perhaps it's worth the occasional hiccups uh along the way when you are chasing that that glory and the match gets a little bit too complicated um because you know i think it's also what he's tapping into when he's playing a match tie break against yannick sinner in the roland garris final and he's equally comfortable going for their spectacular shots because he's kind of engineered himself to chase that feeling for 20-odd years as a tennis player.

43:00Matt Roberts: When I was reading that passage that Matt just read out, you got the sense that if there were no crowd, there would be no point at all to this. It was so striking to me that we've relatively recently he still feels recently been through a period of tennis and sport where there were where there were no crowds um and Al Kraz had turned pro at that point but was just lucky enough I think that it was you know he was it was challenger tennis mostly that he played in in 2020 I think in a few qualifying tournaments but I just I I do have a sort of pretty unrefined theory about a very particular age of tennis player that were hit at the worst possible time by the pandemic and i do just wonder if alcaraz had been like a year older and it had hit him at a slightly more developed stage whether whether it could have derailed him a bit or i don't know it's just something i just something that really popped into my head when i when i was reading that passage yeah that's a really interesting point i think another one of my other pet theories with alcaraz on that point is he's of the member of this, uh, he's, he's part of this generation of athletes that basically grew up with the highlight reel is kind of one of the main, you know, uh, it's like the main fodder of sports fandom now for young people is, is the highlight reel.

44:21And you got to think there's some connection between that and the way he set out to play tennis. Um, you know, that little inkling in his head, that's like, ah, maybe this will be on tennis TV. If I can pull this shot off. Perhaps not consciously operating that way, but yeah.

44:39Matt Roberts: He's such a product of his generation, isn't he? Matt's often made the point when we've talked about, perhaps we haven't done this for a while, but his seeming over-reliance on Juan Carlos Ferreira at points in his career. He's never really played tennis without the sort of anything goes with on-court coaching rule. You know, he's very... Is he Gen Z? Yeah, he must be Gen Z. I think so, yeah. Just too old to be Gen Alpha. Yeah, he's the ultimate Gen Z.

45:13Catherine Whitaker: And I think that point about him being, you know, the kind of highlight reel guy is also a nice contrast that you kind of talk about in the book as well with Sinner, whereas I think it was when he was at the Piatti Academy, was it, when he would actively seek out watching actual sets rather than highlights because he thought he could understand the sport better that way and learn more rather than just looking at a highlight reel. I thought that was a really nice element of the book that I hadn't heard that before. And it really helps you kind of understand Yannick Sinner, I think, as a person and with his kind of approach to the game.

45:52Catherine Whitaker: when you mentioned sort of selfishly hoping that Alcaraz stays as entertaining as he is I felt that at Queen's this year when when he suddenly became a serve bot and I found myself a little I found myself a little bit bored during some of his matches and I was like I really don't really don't want to feel like that while watching Carlos Alcaraz and it did just make me wonder And you talked about part of what made the 2022 US Open match so good is that their serves weren't as developed then. And therefore, they ended up in these crazy rallies all the time. You know, kind of every rally was starting at neutral again.

46:30Catherine Whitaker: And they were able to use their ball striking and athleticism to create these incredible rallies. And it kind of got me thinking about the rivalry generally and how, you know, the Roland Garros final this year being so good. do you think maybe some of their best matches might come on clay in future? I know that they've had two big Roland Garros matches and you kind of described the one in 2024. I think you say actually it was shit. But in 2025 it was incredible. And is that a theory that maybe you could get on board with where like because the serves which have developed, particularly Sinners, might be a bit more neutralized on the clay.

47:14Catherine Whitaker: Like we could see their most spectacular matches coming on that surface. I think that's spot on. I think, I guess different tennis fans have different tastes, but for me, I really love to see these guys have to win the point from neutral. I just think it kind of brings out the creativity in them as tennis players. And even just contrasting that Roland Garris final with the Wimbledon final, it was quite clear that Yannick's first serve really carried him to victory towards the end of that match. I would be willing to bet that their most entertaining matchups will be on the slow hard courts and on clay.

47:54And I was quite surprised just to see kind of how much headway Yannick had made on clay, just as kind of comparing them both on that surface. I sort of thought the gap between him and Carlos was bigger than it turned out to be. when you just think about the fact that he was one point away from winning Roland Garros against him. But, yeah, it also makes you take a step back and wonder if we want to facilitate these incredible matches, maybe we need to tweak certain things about the ball, which has been something the players have been complaining about a lot, or surface speed, or let's try to build the game in a way that brings about the tennis we're most excited about watching.

48:38But yeah, I think that's a good observation.

48:42Matt Roberts: You must be a big Aoi Ito guy. Yes, absolutely. Tennis points starting from neutral. Definitely, yeah. Could not be a bigger fan. Next book. Anytime I see, yeah, it's going to be about the Ito and the forehand slice and why we need more of it. I am seated for that. I would read the hell out of that book. you start by sort of setting the scene for this rivalry with obviously the context of the rivalry or rivalries that have come before it Federer Nadal, Djokovic and the panic that tennis was in about what comes after and this incredible description of tennis as a terminally nostalgic sport which I thought was absolutely brilliant and you wrote about Federer Nadal For a while it seemed there would be just these two locked in a permanent struggle, carving one another into genius as great rivals do.

49:40Matt Roberts: Maybe it would have been so if not for Novak Djokovic. So I guess a kind of obvious question here is, do you see there being a third, a third wheel in this Sineral Kras party? Do you think there either needs to be a third or if not need, do you think their rivalry would be enhanced at least by there being a third wheel? Yeah, I absolutely think it would be enhanced. I think there's I don't like going into a tournament with the sense of kind of foregone conclusion. You know, even when the tennis is exciting as the tennis that these two play against each other. and I think at least having that third or fourth other contender really adds the narrative wrinkles that that we want when we're watching an important tennis tournament so I'm definitely rooting for that outcome and I think it'll also you know one of the things I tried to write about in the book is the way they've each kind of pushed each other to get a little bit better and the things they envy in one another's game and adding a third player into that dynamic just makes it all the richer And you just see how that kind of Djokovic, Ndall, Federer, Triumvirate played out.

50:55And Djokovic eventually taking the upper hand in both of those rivalries. I think they were all pushed to improve in a variety of ways. And that adaptation over the course of 10 years of playing tennis is one of the most interesting arcs to follow as someone writing about the sport.

51:14Matt Roberts: Do you see any obvious contenders right now? Or do you think a third is more likely to be somebody that is not yet on our radar? I think it could well be the case that this third person is 15 or 16 years old right now. It could be something like the age gap between a Federer and a Djokovic. But it's hard to resist. A lot of the common names that are thrown out also interest me. It's hard to resist the ball striking of a Fonseca. I don't think he's like physically as far along as either of these two maybe were at the same time, just in terms of his movement. But again, with Sinner, I felt that that was something that could be worked out over time.

51:58And I suppose I might have the same view towards Fonseca. He's still so young. But I definitely think Ben Shelton and Jack Draper will be big players in the Sinner-Alcaraz story. I would love for them to close that gap as much as possible and keep these matches interesting. But I'm curious what you guys think. Do you think there will be kind of a Djokovic-ian interloper in this rivalry?

52:25Catherine Whitaker: I'm actually leaning maybe not. I think that line you had about sort of we're always trying to make sense of the sport's future by using its past is kind of maybe what we're doing here. and maybe trying to like force someone to become a third when maybe it's possible that this one isn't like the past year and actually Sinu and Alcoa's are just ahead. Like I don't think they're going to win every slam, you know, between them for the next five or six years. I'm sure there will be people coming in there. But in terms of like sustaining it right now, I can't really call anyone.

53:06Matt Roberts: yeah I think there will probably be periods where it will feel like there's a third but I don't think any of those periods will be anywhere near as long as the is the Djokovic Federer Nadal occasional Andy Murray well not occasional but slightly briefer Andy Murray um interesting that you've put Ben Shelton in there would you would you have done that before Canada if you always been a Ben Shelton believer? No, definitely not. I think my view of him has changed dramatically since writing this book and then even in the last three weeks. So I think that he's kind of rounded out his game in ways that I didn't expect him to.

53:48I think he's much more solid off the backhand wing and putting that athleticism to use with some all-court tennis. I think that Shelton has definitely outpaced to my expectations for him. And I often forget that he's roughly the same age as these guys and will be a contemporary of theirs for as long as they're around.

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55:37Catherine Whitaker: since we've got you in u.s open week giri there was there was a little bit in the book that really interested me as well where you write about the u.s open and you know i've i haven't been going to the u.s open for that long but i think even in the time that i have been going i i have sensed to kind of shift in in that tournament and you know i think we're seeing it kind of this year as well with the reimagined mixed doubles and the matchmaking idea that they've got it's kind of it you know it's kind of a shift towards it's it's kind of a shift towards i don't know trying to attract a younger audience maybe trying to tap into the sort of celebrity i'm just wondering what you think of the direction of travel that the US Open's gone in I know I've read pieces from you before where you talked about how like overcrowded qualifying week is now which used to be something that you used to love to cover and now like it gets caught up in fan week like do you think this is ultimately a positive change for US Open or are you a little bit resistant to it I think it's I mean financially it seems like a great decision for the US Open it's seems to be attracting bigger and bigger crowds what that means for the fan experience is a quite different question.

56:58But it's becoming a little bit more New York City-ified. It's sort of a big party. It's a bit more of a scene, whereas I think when I was growing up, it was more just something for tennis heads. And the qualifying week is a great example. It's gone from something where I would go with a friend and maybe my dad just to go scope out a bunch of cool young players. and now it's got a full-fledged mixed doubles matchmaking mixer type event. So I think it's, but, you know, I think it's, if their goals are to, you know, make more money at this tournament and bring in new audiences, I think it's been hugely successful.

57:46If the goal is to preserve a certain kind of ease of moving through the tournament and just comfort level for fans, I think that's a different question.

57:58Matt Roberts: It feels like a tournament that's trying to be a lot more Carlos Alcaraz than Yannick said. Yes, I think that's definitely true. If they could choose one of those two to be their champion, you get the feeling maybe they'd choose Alcaraz. Yeah, I think that's right.

58:12Catherine Whitaker: And I feel like it's only added to the whiplash that already existed going from Wimbledon to the US Open. And I just think that's even bigger than it was now, you know, for a lot of reporters, for example, like us, you know, we will do those two tournaments kind of back to back in a sense with nothing in between. And yeah, the vibes could not be more different. But that's kind of what I love about the sport, right? Yeah. I think there's a place for all of that. But I think it's really one of the lovely things about following the tennis tour is that each of these environments suits different personalities.

58:54And I think there is something about Yannick Sinner that's totally okay being in suburban Ohio and just focusing on his tennis matches on this quick hard court. It's just kind of the ideal circumstances for him.

59:09Matt Roberts: How do you think Alcaraz finds suburban Ohio? I think it's funny. Someone asked him last year, do you feel less pressure? I think it was one of the local reporters asked him, do you feel less pressure because this isn't in like a big cosmopolitan city? This tournament is in suburban Ohio. And he was he he kind of giggled and was like, you know, this is still a Masters tournament. But I do feel like, well, another way to look at it is for him, it's about the fans and how they're responding to him. And I actually think the fan base in Cincinnati does go nuts for him. And there are good tennis literate fans there.

59:47And you look at the way they responded to his match against Djokovic in 2023 and what an epic that was. I think he got all the fan love and fan enthusiasm he was looking for there. So maybe sometimes the story is a little bit more complicated than just population size and quality of expensive restaurants or what have you.

1:00:07Matt Roberts: do you remember how much Federer used to love Cincinnati he was such a Cincinnati guy he would get like a house and bring his whole family and like make a holiday of it and that's where he did the saber for the first time I think he was feeling good enough singled out Cincinnati for something special feeling cheeky enough to try it Gary Matt has come up with a brilliant way to end this episode he's come up with some quick fire Alcaraz sinner questions i'd actually like you both to answer them if that's okay matt soon as you've come up with these these questions i'm turning my game back on me yeah that's fine yeah i'm i'm genuinely so interested in in both your answers to these so if you'll indulge us for a moment giri um who wins the most majors when all is done and dusted out of the two?

1:01:00Alcaraz. Alcaraz.

1:01:04Matt Roberts: You're both doing Alcaraz. But I have bobbled on that question nonstop this summer. And I think if you'd asked me two days after Wimbledon, I might have said Sinner. But yeah, I'm going with Alcaraz now. What will be the best slam for each of them? I think it'll be Australia for Yannick. and i'll go with very jockovichian of him yeah i'll go with roland garros for carlos

1:01:35Catherine Whitaker: stealing my answers yeah i think i think if you've got the same answers as the the

1:01:40Matt Roberts: the sinner outcry right i feel good about that yeah i think australia would kind of in fact you

1:01:47Catherine Whitaker: talk about in the book you know the kind of calm of of australia and the the fact that everyone's just starting from neutral at the start of the season, that feels like it's going to suit Yannick Sinner. And he's so clearly the best on hard courts at the moment. And I suppose the shift for me is that I might have said Wimbledon for Alcaraz before this summer, because it seemed like he was really far ahead of the rest of the field other than Djokovic on grass. But actually Sinner getting him on that quick grass that, you know, bounces so low, suddenly grass really makes sense for Sinner as well.

1:02:19Catherine Whitaker: So I could see them sharing a lot of those. But yeah, I think Al Kraz still got it on clay.

1:02:27Matt Roberts: Who will get to the career slam first? I love this question because obviously Al Kraz is going to have the first pop at it. Right. And they're going to take it in turns to have a go until it's like a game show. It's amazing.

1:02:41Catherine Whitaker: This is where I'm thinking Sinner. I think Sinner too. It's also so weird to look at it in retrospect and realize that Sinner was one point away. You know, we couldn't have known it at the time, but I think he has a better look at Roland Garros next year than Alcaraz does in Australia next year. But I do think it's going to happen pretty soon. One of these guys will put it together.

1:03:03Matt Roberts: So, relatively speaking, do you think Alcaraz has a slight Australia problem? Yeah, I think this is a very, you know, loose theory. but I feel like Alcaraz does have these incredible spells, these incredible dominant runs through the clay season this year. But I think sometimes it takes a little bit of time for him to switch on. And I think the offseason, he often talks about how it's not quite as restorative as he wants it to be. And some of that's his own doing. He's picking up tons of exhibition matches and collecting nice paychecks all over the world. But I do think he hasn't been as locked in in Australia as he has been at the other slams so far.

1:03:50But this is a very loose theory.

1:03:52Matt Roberts: But he'll win it one day. I do think he'll win it one day. I realized the other day that I'd never even considered that Alcarez wouldn't win the career slam.

1:04:04Catherine Whitaker: You know what I mean? Like, I've always just thought he'll win the career slam. whereas it's come into view for Sinner and now I think he'll actually do it. But it really goes back to what we were saying about Alcarez being that prodigy, right? Like as soon as he came on tour, he seemed more fully formed in terms of options at his disposal and he seemed so destined for greatness and kind of greatness is the career slam. And I think it would be fascinating if Sinner gets it first and becomes a block for Alcarez in Australia that might be something that plays out in their rivalry potentially. But I still think Alcoz will get there because of just how high his peak is and I have to trust that he'll find it at least one year in Australia, if not more.

1:04:53Matt Roberts: If he goes a couple more seasons though without winning Australia and starts to overthink it or panic or maybe just think about it some more, I do wonder what changes he might make to, you know, will he start playing a warm-up tournament? Maybe he'll become a United Cup guy, or maybe he will make significant changes to his off-season in the number of exhibitions he takes on. Interesting. What is the one Yannick Sinner shot you could watch on repeat? Sliding backhand down the line, not an original answer, but I just love his shot. I think he's a worthy successor to the Novak sliding backhand down the line.

1:05:37Matt Roberts: And the fact he can do it on a hard court, the hard court sliding. Matt?

1:05:45Catherine Whitaker: Yeah, I mean, to be different, I could definitely watch that one on repeat. But what I'll say is actually the forehand on the run that I feel like was such a key shot for him. I think especially in that Roland Garros final, actually, there were a number of those that he just absolutely cracked. And I think that shot's developed for him. I think that's a great weapon that he's got. And, yeah, like, it always just stuns me, the amount of power that he can produce from his frame, you know, with his natural timing and that kind of kinetic chain that you write about in the book and just everything coming together.

1:06:25Catherine Whitaker: And I think we see that most in those explosive forehands on the run, particularly hit cross-court in my head. Yeah. I think there were a couple of those at Wimbledon too. And I remember there was that moment of Carlos kind of barking back to his box, you know, he's better than me from the baseline right now. And I think that shot, in particular that cross-court running forehand from Yannick was one of the shots that was making him feel that quite acutely.

1:06:54Matt Roberts: one Alcaraz shot you could watch on repeat quite a lot to choose from here I'll go if you want time

1:07:02Catherine Whitaker: yeah yeah please go I love the uh the fake the fake drop shot that he you know on the forehand that he ends up just just slicing and and hitting it deep and yeah it just takes such he makes it look easy but like you could so easily look an idiot i think hitting that shot but his combination of timing and touch is is is pretty genius on that shot i think and sort of befuddles opponents i love it when he does that that's a great shot great pick i think what i love about it most is he's already planted the seed of doubt in the opponent's head like oh you know me as the drop shot guy now you're scared that i'm gonna go for the drop shot and then he's adding another layer of uh complication being like well actually from the same setup i can just go deep with the slice also um i think for me it's got to be the half volley maybe the one where he's doing that kind of joyful little skip when he's caught in a position in the card he knows he shouldn't be in but he's just so flagrantly talented with his hands that he can just pick up those half volleys anyway i i just love those uh final quickfire question who will be the next guy outside of sinner and alcaraz to win a major you've kind of given us the shortlist yeah i think i would go at this point draper and i'm actually not sure i would have said that at kind of many points in time really, but I just think if he can keep improving at the rate that he's improved this year and with the kind of weaponry that he has, I'd go Draper.

1:08:52Catherine Whitaker: But I don't feel confident about that.

1:08:55Matt Roberts: I think I would go Draper. But Shelton has given me a bit of pause. I am in a process of reframing Shelton right now, but it's all so recent that I'm not quite there yet. But the way he shows up in majors is pretty compelling. But I'm a big Draper believer, so I'd go Draper. This is maybe not an answer I feel that confident or that excited about, but I kind of think Zverev will put it together at some point. He's just so consistently at the tail end of these majors. and uh yeah i i do think it will happen at one point or another he'll be there to pick up the pieces yeah yeah exactly yeah can you come up with a supplementary quickfire question so we don't end on zverev matt somehow that's my bad well what about you know um novat jokovic being

1:10:00Catherine Whitaker: such a big element of the book was was really interesting do you think i think he's got another major in him or do you kind of subscribe to the theory that i think certainly i have i think katherine has as well that yes he might be the most likely guy still to reach the semis but there are maybe other guys now who are more likely to actually beat alcavez and sinner maybe just you know with his body breaking down and and what it takes out of him now to kind of live with those guys do you think he's think he's got another major in him or or not I think a lot of it comes down to you know whether he's willing into willing to put in another seasons of work and I think perhaps I can't speak for Novak Djokovic obviously but I think maybe that decision even changed over the course of the summer after playing those matches against Yannick Sinner on those two surfaces and seeing even on grass which was probably Djokovic's best look at adding another major just how good Sinner is and and uh you know you look at the schedule Djokovic has had where it seems like he's really whittled it down to the essentials in terms of his tour stops uh is he going to do this again maybe one more season i think um but i don't think he'll be beating either of these two at a major tournament yeah i'm with you giri thank you so much for your time

1:11:30Matt Roberts: today this has been awesome it really has um and it's an awesome book i'm going to do my breakfast tv thing again but try not to hold the book up in front of the microphone so nobody can see uh changeover a young rivalry and a new era of men's tennis it is out tomorrow august the 19th in the u.s and it is out september the 11th in the uk and it's brilliant i loved it i really did it is it's beautifully written but incredibly accessible um and you had me at philip larkin yeah i love i love that uh i love that poem and thank you guys so much for having me on to talk about the book and look forward to seeing you in New York.

1:12:13Yeah.

1:12:15Matt Roberts: Likewise. Really can't wait. Let's puke this time. Yes. Same amounts of fun, I hope. Giri, thank you so much. Thank you all for listening to the Tennis Podcast. We will see you in New York.

1:12:36Back to school is busy enough.

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