Talking ‘The Cruelest Game’ with Matt Futterman

0:00There are moments that reveal who we are and who we're meant to become. For those born to lead, such moments call for a vehicle of equal distinction. Dynamic by design, uncompromising in execution, the Range Rover Sport was engineered for those rare individuals who demand the world and possess the conviction to claim it. When your time to lead arrives, you need a vehicle that rises to meet it. The Range Rover Sport. Exclusive offers available now. Explore further at RangeRover.com. 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 14500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.

0:43While 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.

1:16Hello and welcome to the Tennis Podcast, a very special tennis podcast today in a very special place, which if you're watching us on YouTube, you can probably already see. You find us in the Wimbledon Library, the actual Wimbledon Library. We've been granted special access for this show today because it felt like the most fitting place to talk to a man about a book. That man is Matt Futterman or Matthew Futterman. Do we have to call you Matthew now? No, just call me Matt, please. It was a mistake I made years ago when you had to decide what your byline was. and I thought Matthew sounded more grown up and nobody calls me Matthew except my mother when she's mad at me.

1:58Okay. I had the same. I rebranded to Catherine on my first day working with David and I've had to commit to it ever since. So I understand the struggle. So Matt Futterman, the book is The Cruelest Game, Chasing Greatness in Professional Tennis. It's coming out next week, Tuesday the 4th of August but available for pre-order now. Yes, pre-orders. Like the most important thing in book publishing these days, apparently, is pre-orders. Most people that are promoting a book have hundreds of copies of the book that they're carrying around with them. They're telling everybody when the book's coming out, you're the most modest promoter of a book that I've ever known.

2:38So, well, this is your chance, Matt. This is my chance. I'll lift it up. Hold up the book. Several years of blood, sweat and tears right here. we we're biased I'm particularly biased because I was asked by you and incredibly flattered by it to to read the audio for the book so I've read it twice now it was a it was a great process getting to do that these two have also read it and I think what struck me and I think all of us I don't want to put words in your mouth but we've talked about it but I think what struck us all was that we live and breathe tennis our whole lives. You know, Matt spends half his life here in the Wimbledon Library reading all about the history of the game.

3:24And yet we all learned a lot from this book about the game and how it is at this moment as a sort of snapshot of professional tennis right now. And I think that was your intention, right, when writing this book? Yeah, that was completely my intention. Well, thank you. Thank you for the kind words about it. And thank you for reading the audio. That's a really hard job that I was not up for. And you seem like the best person to do it. And so all of your listeners, if they, all of your listeners who tune in every week to, you know, hear your tones can now hear them for, I think, 13 hours and 52 minutes of Catherine Whitaker.

4:07Wow. So order the audio and you'll get Catherine. That is so much. You'll get Catherine Whitaker in your ear balls for 13 hours. It's so much, and yet it's also, it was four solid days in the studio, plus a day of sort of pickups and retakes and so on. So I'm like, hmm, only 13 hours. There you go. Right. With me, it would have been 40. The rest was outtakes and mistakes. But no, it was, I loved doing it, actually. I'd never done anything like that before, and it was a great process. So thank you. Anyway. But yes, that was my intention. I mean, what I really wanted to do was I really wanted to explain to people what it was like to be a professional tennis player these days.

4:48I haven't been a professional tennis player. The only thing I know about professional tennis players is what people tell me about that. So this was just sort of a deeply reported deep dive into the behind-the-scenes world and torture. That is professional tennis in the mid-2020s. And, you know, if it was only going to be sort of describing great matches and stuff like that, I really didn't know why people would buy it. Because they could just watch those things on television. Chances are they have watched those things on television. So I wanted to sort of go far beyond the matches, even far beyond sort of the moments before the matches and the match days.

5:37but really get into childhoods and practice courts and psychology sessions that people go through and all those kinds of things. And it took a while to convince people to trust me to do that, but eventually they did. And this is the product of that. And Catherine said it's this wonderful snapshot of modern tennis. Can you take us to the kind of spark for you of when you thought, right, I want to write this book and how it's all going to come together? So I've been a sports writer for 26 years at this point. I basically covered just about every sport there is. I've been to, you know, I've done five World Cups and eight or nine Olympics and covered the NFL and the NBA, every American sport there is.

6:35And when and I was I was covering tennis for many years during that part where I was sort of a general sports writer. And then in 2020, I became pretty much a full time sports writer. And I was completely blown away immediately by, I'm going to overstate this a little bit, but how miserable tennis players were. It seemed like they were all being driven mad. And that sort of culminated in 2022 with Naomi Osaka and all of the struggle that she was having. Here she's making like$50 million a year. And she's one of the world's biggest celebrities. And she's not happy. She kind of hates her job. And that was something I thought was kind of strange.

7:27Because you just don't, I just don't think you see that nearly as much in team sports. People in team sports are pretty happy. Even individual sports like golf. I mean, I think golfers can be tortured by the game in some sense. But, you know, the 70th golfer on the money list is making several million dollars, is sort of practicing, you know, going for long walks in parks, you know, on any given Tuesday. It's brutal. I mean, like, it's, you know, that's, I'm, you know, I'm being glib there. They have a caddy next to them. and there was something about the loneliness of the existence of a tennis player who's traveling around the world, living in hotel rooms, has this sort of entourage of staff, paid friends, things like that.

8:24And this is the only thing they've done since they're like six or eight years old. This has been their sole focus. And it's all riding on that. And I wanted to sort of explore that. That seemed incredibly rich. And so I was thinking I wanted to write another book, and it seemed like that was a unique experience. And this was a unique moment in the sport because what you had was you had these players who had figured it out seemingly, mainly Djokovic, Federer, and Nadal, and also Andy Murray, and Serena. They had done everything. They had won it all. They'd had some rough times, but basically they seemed to have figured it out.

9:08They knew some kind of what I would refer to as like the secret codes of balancing the sport, their endeavors, happiness. And then you had this new crop of players that was trying to acquire those codes or figure out if there were codes. And they seemed completely baffled as to how this group of players had done this, not effortlessly, but had survived and thrived for what was then like 15 years on the tour. and it seemed like a critical moment. So I wanted to write about like, you know, critical players at a critical time in a sport that was just really having a moment in the popular culture and was seemingly getting more popular.

9:55People were talking about it more, coming at it from all sorts of avenues, whether it was, you know, fashion, celebrity, TikTok, all kinds of social media. So it seemed like a good moment for a way to sort of pull back the lens and, you know, take away the curtains and say what it's really like to be a professional tennis player. And to not just be the professional tennis player, but to have pursued this, like I said, to the exclusion of everything else for like 20 years with basically no safety net. there's a there's a theory i've heard that like the first line of a movie and the last line of a movie kind of tell you everything about it and i feel like your first and last lines in this book really do that like the first lines why does this game drive everyone mad what does it take to survive and thrive i did so many takes of those those lines like every different type of incident like getting the intonation on that film at that moment at that moment you must have thought okay this is going to be a long yeah i think the director is thinking oh boy and and and then the last line he didn't quite know how to play this because no one ever does kind of speaks to what you're saying there about like even i think you're referring to jokovic there like even jokovic has has moments when maybe he's not figured it out and you you can't you can't beat the game is kind of a bit of a message.

11:25That line specifically refers to the final act of a tennis player and exiting the stage, which pretty much no one really does gracefully.

11:40And everyone's tortured by it. As we speak here at Wimbledon in the Wimbledon Library, Like, you know, we're, I think, about two hours away from hearing Serena Williams explain why she's come back, why she wants to fight this battle again. And, you know, not risk everything, but risk some level of embarrassment, you know, or some level of dignity is the wrong word. Exposure. Exposure, right. Yeah. Get yourself, you know, put yourself back in that situation. You saw it with Andy Murray a couple of years ago where, you know, I think all of us could not understand what he was doing on a tennis court and couldn't pull away.

12:35I mean, even Federer, he had to, you know, he had to blow out his knee and really, like, risk his future leisure time, you know, instead of, you know, knocking off a couple years back when it would have been a lot safer. And, you know, Nadal limped off the court. So it's really hard. And I think, you know, what is Djokovic going to do? I think he doesn't know. He's a little lost. And, you know, we'll just have to see.

13:10David Law: Yeah. The impression I got immediately upon reading just the first few pages of the book is the experience I'd had 12 months earlier when I discovered Hard Courts by John Feinstein, the late great writer who wrote well over 20 books himself across basketball and NFL and golf. And he did one book, really, that everybody remembers on tennis. And he told the story of the 1990 tennis season. And he did it through the eyes and lives of several significant and some less significant names within the sport of tennis. And I had known about that book for a long time. But I picked it up, I'm sad to say, because he passed away last year, sadly and shockingly.

14:02David Law: and suddenly and I wanted to experience this book I'd heard about and I read it and I just loved it so much I felt like I was living an era that I just didn't quite remember as a tennis fan because it was just before my time so I kind of discovered some of the history in this different way and when I read just a few pages of your book I suddenly felt like I'm I'm holding a a 2026 version of hard courts or at least that's what i'm in for as a reader and i i then asked i told you about that and you seemed quite happy about that yeah that was the goal look i read hardcore i read hardcore it's a long time ago um you know i mean john wrote a book called the season on the brink which is probably which might be his most famous book which I think was his first book where he spent a year with Bobby Knight, who was the University of Indiana basketball coach and really a terrible person.

15:08But a legendary coach, but really tortured his players and could be incredibly nasty. I'm sure he had some good qualities too. but it's a very famous book but anyway yes Hard Quartz I read a while ago and yeah that was the goal was to write a version of Hard Quartz for the 2020s but I will say and this is not sort of a criticism of John but I do think I do think I wanted to approach my book with a lot of empathy

15:54because, you know, whatever you think of professional tennis players, whether they're struggling mentally or if you think they're spoiled, if you think they want too much money, I would argue they come by that honestly. You know, they have had the craziest childhoods and upbringing and almost none of them go to regular school anymore. So they're not really socialized. A lot of them come from these families. Most of them come from families, except for the ones who are incredibly wealthy, where everything has been invested on them. And it is such a bizarre existence that I think it's really sort of hard to judge them by sort of the standards of like a quote-unquote normal person.

16:52So I wanted to really get at that and get at the obsessive nature of their pursuit because it's all they've known and it's, I think, at the heart of all of their behavior.

17:10David Law: Yeah, and one of the things that struck me reading hard courts is how irritated John was by Andre Agassi, a sort of young 1990 flashy. Everybody had an opinion about him, but John clearly found him irritating and difficult and obnoxious, quite honestly. And he couldn't hide that. You know, that was how he felt about him. And he knew what he was good for in terms of the game. But it is interesting, isn't it? We've had this experience of the players making their stand against the Grand Slams recently. and it's it is quite difficult to distance yourself and not end up having an opinion of them or of this or of the grand slams or of the situation and i do i i feel what you're saying that you you you try to take your opinion out of it yeah definitely i mean you and you mentioned you mentioned andre and you know i mean i don't it's hard to pick out like your favorite chapters of the book, but certainly one of my favorite things that has ever happened to me in my career is getting stuck in New York rush hour traffic in the back of an SUV with Andre two years ago when he was sort of just coming back into the public eye in tennis.

18:42and I mean he's about my age I think he's six months younger than me but um you know he was sort of the first tennis player that was like right you know that I would have killed to be Andre Agassi and then I read open and I thought like oh my god like um so you know and hard courts Yeah, like he's annoyed with Agassi. Was that a shock to you when you read Open to discover that he kind of hated his life? It was, I think it was a shock to everybody. And I mean, I think Open is just, I mean, I certainly think it's the best sports book ever written. And I mean, I just think it's one of the great books ever written.

19:29And it's so raw and so honest. and shortly after it came out, I was doing an interview with him and I remember saying to him, you know, talking about his dad and how he was raised and stuff like that and I said to him, and I think this is in the book as well, I said, but let me just play devil's advocate here. It kind of worked, right? Like, it turned you into the best tennis player in the world and he just sort of looked at me and he said, he's like, yeah, It also turned me into a drug addict. And there was a moment, it was one of those moments as a reporter, you're like, okay, how's this, what am I going to say to, like, what's the next thing I say in this conversation?

20:15I found that moment particularly arresting. I mean, obviously it's a mic drop thing to say, but it's also in such stark contrast with what most tennis players, I mean also applies outside of tennis but let's take tennis players here you know most of them you ask a lot of the players that you speak to do you think it was all worth it and everybody else says yeah right they say look where I am of course it's worth it and that's one of those you know it's like saying everything happens for a reason isn't it like you don't have the counterfactual of what life might have been like how happy you might have been if you'd just done something completely different or still pursued tennis but in a in a way that required less sacrifice or hardship or pressure or whatever and you know it's like saying I don't regret that thing that I actually do regret because if I hadn't done the thing that I regret I wouldn't be where I am now well like imagine where you could be now if you haven't hadn't done that thing but like it's what you need to tell yourself right well there's but there's two questions and and one scene in the book i asked the both of them to jean ken win who uh you know told me this horrible story about what her father did to her when she was young which was i think she was you know six seven six years old and brings her for a you know tryout with a coach two hours away from where they lived in a small town in China.

21:57And it wasn't actually a tryout. He lies to her. And, you know, she thinks she's trying to impress him. But the coach has already agreed to take her on. And after... Take her on residentially. Yeah, take her on residentially. Yeah. And at the end of the hitting session, the father says, okay, so you passed. You're going to stay here and I'm going to go home. And just abandoned. I mean, it's child abandonment, basically. And, you know, I mean, she has struggled with that and did for years and cried all the time through her childhood. And so I asked her, was it worth it? And she was like, well, I guess if that's where I'm here now.

22:40And then I said, would you do it again? And she said, no. Would you do it again even knowing where you were going to get? And she said, no. And, you know, I think that tells you just how painful it was. Here she is, you know, like one of the most popular athletes in China worth tens of millions of dollars. And, you know, would you do it again? Like, absolutely not. And like that's a, yeah, that's sort of that. And that was a conversation early on when I was reporting this. And that sort of frames a lot of different things about the sacrifice that is required. And all of them go through that at some point.

23:27They're saying no to a lot of things. And it's funny. I once asked Emma Raducano if she regretted it at all not going to college. and she was like no I've got a bunch of friends at those American colleges living in dorms and yeah I think I'm good with this life and all I was thinking was like you know you would have thrived at college she's so smart she's well socialized she went to regular school she would have done really well with a couple of years of college so anyway Like you said, like, well, of course I'm going to do this again. Like, I don't regret decisions I've made because look what it's got me.

24:19But I don't know, it's hard to, I think it's hard for even some of these players to really sort of like see the benefits of that, even when they're going through the tough times.

24:30David Law: Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income isn't easy. Bond markets are massive, murky, and let's be real, lots of firms throw a couple of flashy funds your way and call it a day, but not Vanguard. Vanguard bonds are institutional quality. Institutional quality isn't a tagline, it's a commitment to your clients. It means top-grade products across the board. Vanguard's been in the game a long time, and their scale gives them a serious edge. They're able to invest across all kinds of sectors, maturities and geographies, which means they can spot and act on opportunities that others might miss.

25:14David Law: So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com forward slash audio. That's vanguard.com forward slash audio. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. As a small business owner, you're the CEO, the marketing team, and the customer service rep all at once. I was recently talking to a shop owner who told me their worst nightmare isn't a slow day, it's the vanishing act. It's that moment you're inches away from a deadline and the Wi-Fi just disappears. We've all felt that pit in our stomach when the connection flares up right when it matters most.

25:56Your business is only as strong as your connection. AT &T Business is the reliable provider built for that exact brand of hustle, so you can stay focused on the work that builds your legacy. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. There are moments that reveal who we are and who we're meant to become. For those born to lead, such moments call for a vehicle of equal distinction. Dynamic by design, uncompromising in execution, the Range Rover Sport was engineered for those rare individuals who demand the world and possess the conviction to claim it. When your time to lead arrives, you need a vehicle that rises to meet it.

26:38The Range Rover Sport. Exclusive offers available now. Explore further at rangerover.com.

26:48I think that particular area I mean obviously it's a thread that a theme that runs throughout the book but I think your perspective of having covered so many other sports is particularly critical here in the way that you're able to write this book and the way you write everything really because and we're guilty of this to an extent I think although we try not to the sport is so institutionalized isn't it there's such a feeling of well this is just how it has to be right but like you've seen all these other sports and like okay tennis is perhaps unique in how demanding it is but it shouldn't have to be this way to achieve success I know there are potentially the odd exceptions maybe Yannick Sinner is one sort of a well-adjusted world number one who had a relatively normal childhood although he's still I don't know maybe normal but relatively normal not objectively normal but I do think there is just a feeling in tennis and certainly with tennis parents that want their children to succeed that think well this is just how it has to be this is the price.

28:03It seems like maybe you know it seems like maybe it is just because I would think of it. I think it's... Tennis is just different in some ways. I think it's almost like playing violin. And, you know, all those violin prodigies, they start when they're six years old too. And they don't do anything else. It doesn't have to be that way. I think you're right. But there are exceptions. Are there going to be more exceptions? Exceptions, probably not that many. I mean, right now Ben Shelton is probably the biggest exception, but his father was a professional tennis player. So he went to regular school, was a terrible junior.

28:50I mean, I don't – he doesn't know and I haven't looked it up, but he swears his junior ranking was like never above the hundreds. All he wanted to do was just play for his father at the University of Florida. That was the goal because he wasn't good enough to think anything else. He was playing football until he was in eighth grade. And then his sister, who was playing junior tennis, she got to miss school every Friday and sometimes Monday if she was doing well in the tournament. He didn't really like school that much. And so he thought that would be a pretty good deal. And so he started playing more tennis.

29:29And so he's, you know, the number four seed here. and number five in the world. So I guess that shows you that it can be done a different way. All you have to do is be, you know, six foot five and have a parent who was a professional player so you've got really good genes and, you know, be blessed with this crazy athleticism that he's blessed with. But even Ben Shelton, like, you know, You've watched Ben Shelton play Carlos Alcaraz, and here you have one player who didn't play seriously until he was 14 years old, and another who was playing seriously when he was five, and his family owns a tennis club.

30:18So how many millions of balls, additionally, has Carlos Alcaraz hit than Ben Shelton? I don't know, 10 million? talking about hours and hours and hours on the tennis court. And so maybe that's the difference between number five and number one, that there's a certain level of tennis in Carlos Alcaraz's hands that there just isn't going to be in Ben Shelton's. And there might be people listening thinking, well, hang on, Carlos Alcaraz seems pretty happy and well-adjusted. And OK, his family, his dad in particular and his brother are very involved, but it seems in a fairly healthy way. But he is an example, and you illustrate this really well in the book, of a tennis family that had limited resources.

31:07This is an expensive sport. You know, producing a champion is particularly expensive where they had to pick one. They had to pick one of their kids to bet the family, bet the house on. Right. And he was the chosen one from a very young age. and that's not a healthy childhood to have. Even if everything else going on is healthy, just that situation is unhealthy. And there are examples in the book of where, well, Amanda and Samova is the best one, I think, where originally the chips were on her older sister and then Amanda has a go one day and she's very clearly better. So they switch, the family switches where they're putting the house.

31:55And that's, I mean, that's a crazy position for a child to be in, right? Even if they think they're choosing it and they love it and... Yeah, every parent, it's funny, every tennis parent says the exact same thing, which is, oh, you know, he or she, you know, you couldn't get them off the court. whether it was 90 degrees or whether it was raining, they would cry when it got off the court. And I just think it's bullshit. I just don't believe it. I mean, maybe it was true sometimes, but I do think that there's lots of times that those parents – Well, it might have been true, but if you've raised your child to believe that you, as a parent, who is their world and whose approval they're seeking the whole time, And if you've raised them to believe that what will please you as their parent is them wanting to stay on the court rain or shine 12 hours a day, then that's how they're programmed, right?

33:01Right. Well, like Andre says, it wasn't, you know, he's watched a lot of tennis parents over the years. and he said it's not about just being cool when your kid loses and being nice and supportive. It's also about not being, you know, ebullient when the child wins because the message that you're giving at that point and the message he received, which is like, that's love. you know and so the only way i get that and the only way i make you that happy is if i win so even if you're being sweet and buy me an ice cream cone after a loss it's still not the other thing and so he you know he said the best thing that can happen is to basically just have no reaction at all whether your child wins or loses sit on your hands smile and that's it Which is impossible, right?

34:08It's so interesting. It's completely impossible. So anyway, but that's, yeah, that's my hour and a half in an SUV with Andre and explaining to me the physics of the forehand and all of these people coming to his court in Las Vegas. and asking him for the secrets because he is kind of a wizard. And the problem is that just very few people have his gifts and have his hands and his reflexes. So he can explain it. And I think Novak does this too. I mean, when I'm having dinner with Novak at the US Open, he's basically explaining to me how to do it. And he doesn't care. And you haven't become a Grand Sam champion since then.

35:03Right, exactly. There's obviously more to it. And he's done this with all these other players. He's given all these clues to Holger Rune and Mensik and Yannick Sinner. He's an incredible resource for them. And he doesn't care because it's one thing to have the instruction manual, but it's not a thing to be good enough to put the instruction manual into effect. And that dinner with Djokovic, that SUV journey with Agassi, like there's such unique moments that you're only going to get in this book. And this book is filled with them where like your access really shows people behind the curtain in a way that they're just not going to get elsewhere.

35:52Well, hopefully. that's one of the things I loved about it so much and I again listening to you I thought was so interesting when that that came to mind for you a moment I think we were all out of the US Open a few years ago where everyone went up and you went down Matt at Arthur Ashe Stadium with the Cocoa semi-final with the climate protester can you tell us about that because I think that sort of really is a good example of the sort of journalism that that is as a thread throughout this book yeah that was sort of a bit of a light bulb moment about how I wanted to approach the book um because I did write about 150 pages maybe a little more and ended up throwing them out because I just thought they were bad they were bad and they weren't they didn't have any kind of exclusivity.

36:43And like I said before, it seemed like stuff that people had seen on TV. And I thought like, okay, so what can I write about that hasn't been on TV? And I thought of that night at the US Open in the semifinals in 2023, when there was the climate protest in the middle of Coco's match with Mukava. And when that climate protest happened, and they got shuttled off the court. I've been to the US Open for years. I know that stadium pretty well. And I wanted to go down to the referee and the tournament director's office to see what was going on. I figured there'd be other people there. And there weren't.

37:27And so sort of wandering down to the hallways. And I'm walking one way and Coco's walking the other way. And she sees me. and she kind of like has this weird look on her, this kind of grin on her face. And she says, it's the climate protestors, isn't it? And I was like, yeah, I think so. And she, you know, here she's in like the biggest match of her life at that point at the U.S. Open, which is basically a Coco Gauff party every year at this point. And I don't know, she just, she seems so light, even in that moment. And I think she was actually kind of proud because she thought it was going to happen.

38:10She thought there was going to be some kind of protest. And they could have done another match. But I think she was pretty happy that they had chosen her match because this was going to be the highest profile match. So she was kind of like, she just kind of nodded like, awesome. So, like, she did not want, obviously, she would not have chosen to, you know, have this semifinal where she was cruising be interrupted. But, yeah, and then she, you know, went and got a snack and then came out and just like, you know, I'm going to the gym for a little bit and getting on the bike, going to stay loose.

38:47And shortly thereafter, like, Carolina Mukovo walked down through the hallway. And, I mean, she looked miserable. She looked like she was, you know, on her way to a root canal. And it was just like such a stark contrast between two people. One was just as loose as you could possibly be in the middle of a night where the lights were shining the brightest. And the other one was just struggling with it, clearly. And certainly was going to be struggling with this interruption. So, yeah, that was a moment of like, okay, so how many more of those moments did I have? and how many more can I get? And so that's what I was going for over the last couple of years, trying to get that level of intimacy.

39:39Is that the right word? It's kind of creepy. I didn't mean intimacy, but like, you know. But yeah, the sort of private moments, whether it's on like a private court in the San Fernando Valley with Naomi Osaka where she's practicing or having some long conversations at Indian Wells with Jason Stacey, sort of right at the moment where they're trying to turn Sabalenka into the world number one and move her past all of her struggles. And sort of like all these moments like that that I tried to populate the book with. And there's such a premium on those these days because how rare is it to get the word, I mean, I prefer the word intimacy to access, which is what is sort of common parlance, isn't it?

40:34David Law: Loitering works. Yeah. How rare is it to get access to a tennis player? I mean, access is getting harder and hard to come by anyway, but access where you don't have an agent and a communications manager and various other entourage members, you know, omelette chef sat in the corner. Like, that's so rare. Back in the day, it was probably diminishing even at the time that Hardcourts was written. But you hear Richard Evans on our Relived shows talking about how he used to just be hanging out with Wimbledon champions and going to the Wimbledon Ball with Althea Gibson and that kind of thing. Maybe that crossed a line, I don't know.

41:11But it is such a different world now. You just don't. It's extremely rare, that kind of. Well, the money changed everything. I mean, it used to be that the wealth gap between journalists and professional athletes was not that large. Professional athletes didn't make very much money in the 1960s. In tennis, they only made under the table money or they weren't allowed to be professional. It depends how you define it. And once the money came into the sport, which came with the TV and the exposure, and these tennis players became, you know, I refer to Bjorn Borg as like the sport's first Beatle. That sort of changed everything.

42:03And I think that's when things started to move away because, you know, now they weren't necessarily like driving to the tournament. They were having drivers and people taking them along and they could afford. I mean, Borg himself told me that he thinks he would have lasted a lot longer on the tour in 2025 than he did in the late 70s because he was like, I was just so lonely. But if I had a big team around me, it would have been a lot easier. He's like, I had, yeah. He's like, you know, sometimes my wife would be with me. Um, and, you know, I had my coach, he's like, but that was it. And, you know, there just wasn't, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't much of a life to it.

42:52So, uh, yeah, I, I don't, I don't love the term access, but I also, I guess you hear a lot of complaints about access these days. And, you know, I guess I just sort of take it as a challenge to just sort of like be a better reporter be a better journalist figure it out figure out a way and that's what you have

43:13David Law: to do um if it was easy everybody would do it do you in the process of your reporting for the athletic and also for for this book do you have you ever do you ever get nervous going into some of these situations where you're going to cross paths with people outside of an organized setting because i i do a bit of this you know and and sometimes i have to really pluck up the courage to go and not be shy and not be feeling that i'm going to be rude by interrupting somebody or crossing paths with them and stopping them and asking them something when they're going about their day i just wonder whether that ever requires any well generally i don't think i do that that much and I think it's one of the reasons why why whether it's players or agents why people talk to me which is I mean a long time ago I had a mentor in journalism and you know one of his big pieces of advice was don't be a dork you know like you know don't interrupt people when they're eating.

44:28Pick your spots. I mean, I rarely... I will, even now, especially if it's an early round match. For instance, the French Open. When Tiafoe lost at, I don't know, what was it, one in the morning in that brutal five-set match, I withdrew my requests because I wasn't necessarily writing off the match. I didn't want to make him trudge over the press to tell me why he had lost at 1.30 in the morning, one of the lowest points in his life. And I do think something like doing that that may make me come across as a bad reporter in some way, but I think it pays off down the road when you're not a jerk. You're not, you know, when you're being polite, you know, I do think, I do think that can go a long way.

45:31And, you know, I do think I'm a pretty fair reporter. I don't go out of my way to be mean. I think I'm pretty honest. I tell it like it is. But, and I give, I always give people an opportunity to explain themselves. Many opportunities to explain themselves if something has gone the wrong way. but I'm not a jerk about it for the most part maybe some people have a different opinion but I try really hard and

46:06there's different ways and there's different values to certain access some tennis players are not great about talking about themselves and I learned that very quickly like I could work very hard to get certain interviews with certain players and would get them and you didn't really get very good material so you have to talk to the you have to talk to you know you have to talk to a coach or a trainer or a parent or a sibling i remember

46:36David Law: when you did you introduced the world and us to victoria and boca last year's french open really i saw her match and then the next thing i know you're around the other side of the court having a chat with her family are coming up to you to debrief on the match because you've already established a bit of a rapport but they'd all got a story to tell about her and the journey. Yeah and this is not a criticism of Victoria Mboko but I mean I think at the time she was, was she 19? 18 at the time? I mean it's the rare 19 year old who can be expansively introspective and especially shortly after playing a tennis match, you're going to get a lot more information from her sister who travels with her, or her older sister who's, I think, about 10 years older who travels with her.

47:29And that's just a matter of, you know, it's finding good sources, you know, and getting them to trust you, to tell you things either maybe they shouldn't tell you sometimes, but things that are really interesting. and that's kind of the structure of the book isn't it like you've got you've got chapters on all of the various players of the modern game and you and you tell their story and you talk about what kind of their particular struggle is and how they're searching for their codes and to do that you speak to so many people around the player as well as the players themselves like it's it's such a such a complete storytelling of all these people with this continuous thread through the book of why are they all feeling like they're feeling and what's what's this person's particular struggle i i think that's i think it's i just love the way it was yeah and sometimes they and sometimes they're surprised that the other person said that about them there's a particular moment with Stefano Sitsipas and his father.

48:41And because his father, his father gave me this whole speech about, you know, I mean, it's more than a speech. It was a sort of lengthy coffee I had with him about that he had been a teacher. I think a physical education teacher. And about, you know, what you need to do to be a good teacher is you need to listen. And he's giving me this whole thing. And, like, all I can think of is, like, I mean, all I see is you sitting by the court and barking instructions at your child. And so, anyway, we went on and on talking about that. He kind of, like, psychoanalyzed me to tell me what he could see about me and, you know, how he has this gift of looking into people.

49:29and then I was talking to Stephanos and I said your father told me that the key to being a good coach and a good teacher is listening and Stephanos says he said that? really? I said yeah he said that's what he's learned he said well I hope he's learned that lesson so it's sort of funny you find yourself sometimes in the middle of these kind of odd family dynamics, which is also unique to tennis, probably in the most unhealthy way, because, you know, you go to the, you cover an NFL game, and, you know, maybe the parents are at the game somewhere in the middle of 75 ,000 people, but they're not telling, I mean, you know, Patrick Mahomes' father is not telling them, you know, what play to run in the third quarter when the Chiefs are playing the Colts.

50:31I mean, that's not happening in the NFL the way it is in tennis. And I don't think it happens anywhere. It doesn't happen in golf. You don't see, I mean, unless there's a father who's a caddy or a mother who's a caddy, you don't see it in golf. And yet in tennis, it's this bizarre, you say it's institutionalized. That's just the way it is. well maybe it shouldn't be right yeah so the the Madison Keys victory at the Australian Open last year that feels like a really significant moment because it's almost like if you could have set up a victory and a narrative around it and a post match a post victory press conference to kind of prove the thesis of the book if you like or one of the central theses of the book.

51:28It was that. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's certainly what occurred to me. It felt that victory for Madison Keyes was, and the way she talked about it, was a demonstration of if winning is the thing, and you've been programmed to think winning is the thing that'll complete you and make it all make sense and make it all worth it, you're going to be disappointed and you're going to be miserable. Yeah, because everybody ends their week losing for the most part. A majority of the time, even if you're Roger Federer. I mean, I think like what's the best winning percentage of a player in terms of tournaments?

52:12Is it even 20 % or something like that? Maybe. I feel like Tiger Woods at his best was at about one out of three starts he was winning. But, yeah, I mean, I think what Madison said is, in so many words, you know, all these years I had these coaches telling me how to win. That's not what I needed, actually. What I needed was permission to lose. And that's what, you know, her husband. And, yeah, I mean, we've talked a lot about sort of the blurred lines of, you know, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, mothers, you know, coaching and fathers coaching their children and how that's a danger zone.

53:01with Madison it happens to have worked with Bjorn seemingly Bjorn Frantangelo seemingly that that's what she needed she found in him a kind of safe space where it was going to be okay for her to lose and he said it in the middle of that match too and it was uniquely I wonder if that happens it probably doesn't happen if it's the year before, before they put the coaching boxes on the court. And she's playing Elena Rabacchina and it's all slipping away. And she goes over to the corner and he's like, and he just, you know, he says to her, he's like, if you lose, it's totally fine. 30 hours, we'll be back home in Orlando.

53:52We'll be drinking coffee. It's all good. He's like, but I just think unless you give it your best shot, you're going to be kind of cranky. Like, so go down swinging and it's totally fine if it doesn't work because then we're home and we'll be happy and it's all good. And like she just kind of takes off from there. So it's a different dynamic depending on each player and sort of discovering that and her discovery of that. And it wasn't just her, and it was also sort of people around her. And it wasn't just Bjorn either. It was a guy, Rashard Lankford, who's a trainer who was working with the USTA.

54:36Now he's working with the Chicago Bears. No background in tennis, but a great physical trainer. I mean, literally when he got hired by a friend who had been hired by the USTA, he had to get out a rule book and, like, figure out the scoring system. and he ended up being a trainer and sort of working with Madison and he said to her, you don't really like doing things that make you uncomfortable, do you? And she said no. And then he talked to Bjorn about it and Bjorn said, yeah, I've noticed that. And he was like, you know what, she needs to practice the way she wants to play on the court. She hates push-ups and pull-ups.

55:19She needs to do push-ups and pull-ups. She needs to get used to being uncomfortable and dealing with the consequences. And if the consequences are, okay, you lose, but your husband still loves you and you learn that lesson that we talked about with Andre before, that no matter what the consequences are, the love is still there, then you can get your path to the waterfall. It's a great chapter in the book. It's almost the lightest one because you're reading it knowing that not just that it all turns out okay and that she wins the big thing, but also that she's okay either way. Like you're reading it with this very comforting knowledge and almost that there's a comedy element of I don't want to give too much away, but I hadn't realized how reluctant Bjorn was to do that job.

56:12Oh, yeah. Like so reluctant. It was here. Even when it was going well, he was like, okay, that's great, but I am going to go back to not being your coach now. And yeah, like, again, reading that, knowing what you know, which is that a few months later, they end up, he ends up coaching her to the Australian Open title is always kind of funny. Yeah, it was here a few years back. I think it was after, it might have been after the Andreva match where Andreva sort of lost her mind a little bit when she was really young. She's still really young. and walking out of the court with him. And I was chatting with him.

56:49And I was like, oh, you're coaching her now. And he's like, yeah, but no, I'm not doing this. And she was on this winning streak at the time. And he's like, I'm not sticking with this. And I was like, I think you're her coach now. And he's like, no, no, no. They were engaged. Like, no, no, no, I swear. And I was like, it's not going to work. I'm just telling you it's not going to work. You're not going to get out of it. This is not a job. It's gone too well. It's not a job. you're going to be able to say no to. That's a great moment. Yeah. One of many. Thank you. It's a great book. Thank you very much.

57:21I hope so. Did you enjoy writing it? Oof.

57:30You know, I was talking to Mary Carrillo about this,

57:38who is far more gifted writer than I am, I would say. I don't think of myself as a gifted writer at all. I think I'm a pretty good reporter and I can tell other people's stories well. But I'm never someone who I think people are going to be like, oh, he turns beautiful phrases. That's just not my strength. And that's fine because it just makes me try and be a better journalist. But I was talking to Mary about how hard it was. And I said, it's strange. It's getting harder. And she said, well, yeah. And I said, I don't know why exactly. And I said, is it because your standards go up? And she said, it's something along the lines of, yeah, you're just less tolerant of shit.

58:33and so I think as you I wanted to believe that like as you've done this I mean it's my third book that the third one would be easier than the first one but I think probably I think they probably get harder and I think even I think writing like my day job I think writing good stories gets harder because you want them to be that much better and you don't want to be dashing off stuff. You want to take your best shot. So, enjoyment, yes, because it is satisfying to do hard things.

59:21David Law: You sound like one of these tennis players you've been asking. Yeah, it was all worth it. Because it has to be. Well, yeah, I think it's a little different what I'm going through. I got to go to college. I got to go to regular high school. If things didn't work out for me, I had two brothers that my parents had invested a lot of money in their education as well. And my dad did say, the thing that I will say about my father probably if I outlive him, he's almost 86 years old, is that I remember growing up he would always say, well, don't worry if something doesn't work out. You can always come home.

1:00:14Just live with that. You'll be fine. it was a nice safety net you know it's pretty good parenting I think try things if you fall we're here I'm very envious of you having Ben Crow's phone number as well yeah he's helpful he seems like a wise man yes he is very wise and knows how to like put and Ben who was sort of the mindset guru for Ash Barty and had done work with Andre Agassi when he was working, got to know him at least when he was working at Nike back in the day and has worked with some other players, some more successful. It was here that you caught up with him. Yeah, I've caught up with him a lot.

1:01:10I tried to go surfing with him in Australia one day. that didn't work out so well just because he's a far better surfer than I am. And I think he was sort of – and he put me on like a short board and – a short board and rocky waves and, you know, I could barely like balance on the thing, much less get up on it. I think if I had his number, I'd be just texting him seeking life advice all the time. You get some good advice. But, you know, there's a lot of smart people in tennis. I mean, I've gotten – I've learned a lot from Jason Stacey. I think people have a funny image of Jason. He's Marina Sabelanka's mindset guru, and he's got the shaved head, and he's got stuff written on his forehead.

1:01:54But you talk about someone who's self-conscious and introspective and very thoughtful about how to stay calm when everything is going crazy or how to try to stay calm.

1:02:10he's got a lot of good advice because he has struggled with it himself and had a really rough upbringing and yeah it's interesting to hear him tell stories also not a tennis person his main background is in jiu-jitsu and he was explaining to me about grappling in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and being in a headlock, upside down, and okay, what are you going to do? And all you can do in that moment, he's like, if you can just control your breath for a second and take a deep breath, even though somebody is squeezing your neck or the headlock, then you can think for a second. And then you can figure out what to do.

1:03:01And, like, you translate that onto a tennis court. When a lot of these players, you know, David often refers to tennis, and I think everybody does, as non-contact boxing. Because that's really what it is. You know, these players are in headlocks a lot. Novak Djokovic is in a headlock a lot. And he feels it. And he panics. But then he knows how to get back. And he has, like, and he looks for a sign. and you know as he told me over dinner in Cincinnati that during that match with Alcaraz it was looking at the sun and seeing it steadily dropping and knowing that if he could just last you know another 10-12 minutes and hang in there it was going to get shady it was going to get cooler and he was going to be able to figure it out and it's like little things like that in the moment if you can if you know if you can breathe if you can feel and get back to like the very basic things of like what the towel feels like when you're wiping the sweat off your face and really be i mean in the moment is a very sort of cliched phrase but in practice you know what does that look like to be in the moment it's really just like saying i'll let you know right right it's really just saying i'm going to take a deep breath here i'm going to wipe my face i'm going to feel the texture of this towel on my face hold up the book one more time matt i've just realized It says not for sale on it.

1:04:30Yeah, this is the advanced uncorrected proof. But the cover is there. Don't believe it. It is for sale. It is out on August the 4th. It is available for pre-order now. And you can pre-save it as an audio book as well. So, yeah. 13 hours of Catherine Whittaker's voice. Yeah, far too much. So, yeah. Ignore that. Yes, I'll cover that up. By the time US Open comes around, you'll be carrying stacks of copies under your arm. I don't know. You'll have a cap. Do you want to be that guy? You'll have a cap with the book title on it. I know. I should. Yeah, it's hard. You've got to be that guy a little bit.

1:05:14You have to be a little. He is.

1:05:15David Law: He's sitting here. Yeah. Yeah, I do. A little bit more. Right. I'll have to do it some. But it is the worst part. For me, it's the worst part of writing a book. the best part of writing a book is like sitting alone even though I just described it as very painful is like sitting alone and like having a good hour or even a good 10 minutes but I hope talking to us about it has been the best part of the worst part I hope so too it feels good, it feels great well thank you and thanks for the book and yeah I did absolutely love it and the gig, yeah, it was a joy to do and I'm very honored. And yeah, we are biased, but it's a great read.

1:06:00Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I was, I would say, a friend of the Tennis Podcast long before I was a quote-unquote friend of all of you. And one of the great things about this job has been becoming a friend with all of you. And getting your racket strung by my dad. Yeah, how about that? That's a pretty good service. Transatlantic Racket Stringing Service. Yeah. Matt's been stressing about your grip situation for weeks. So much. Yeah, the grip. You saw my dad actually said you did re-grip it for him, didn't you? Well, it's good to have, you know, I am the kind of player who likes to have a personal stringer in every country.

1:06:45Folks, we will be back next week to talk about Washington and Memphis and Los Cabos and any other nonsense that the tennis world throws up in the meantime. Hello to Bodhi, Maisie and Roger, our mascots. Hello to our top folks and executive producers, Greg, Chris and Jeff. No shout outs today, but a huge thank you to the Wimbledon Library for hosting us today. There will be a copy of your book here one day soon, I assume, Matt? That's not up to me. If you ever have copies of your book available. They're coming. What a place for it to be. Yeah, yeah. If you told, you know, 10-year-old Matthew, well, 10-year-old Matt, I mean, I could barely read at 10 years old.

1:07:32I certainly didn't have the attention span for it. So, yeah, that would be a hard one to believe. It's a special place. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It's one of the great places. I'm looking at newspaper clippings. We're surrounded by tennis magazines from around the world and over the years. And behind us is the book section. And yeah, Matt Futterman's book is going to be on those shelves and sitting alongside the greats of tennis writing of the past. And it's where it deserves to be. And over there is Andy Murray's granddad's scrapbook. or one of them, there are multiple, that he kept over the course of Andy's career, documented the whole thing through newspaper clippings and he also cut out the bios of every one of his opponents en route to the 2013 Mumbled and Title.

1:08:31I assume he did the same for 2016 as well. And they've digitised them all. I mean, one of the actual ones is on display. I'm looking at it now, but they've also digitised all of them and it's an incredible thing to have. So yeah, if you're in the Wimbledon area and you've got some time to kill and you want to be Matt Roberts for the afternoon, I would urge you to take a trip to the Wimbledon Library and we thank them very much for hosting us for this show. Thank you, Matt. Once again, good luck with the book. It's going to pain us to see you on other podcasts, but know it has to be done. Maybe, we'll see.

1:09:07I mean, I've just spent ages encouraging you to do book promo, So we can't get annoyed at you going on rival podcasts.

1:09:14David Law: And we were first anyway. Exactly. Thank you all for listening. We are part of the Athletic Podcast Network and we will speak to you very soon.

1:09:3950 ,000 bonus points. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at bestwestern.com. No additional purchase necessary for sweeps. See bonus points, TNCs, and sweeps rules for details. This episode is sponsored by Michael's, your destination for all things birthday parties. We just had Lucky's first birthday, and it was so great to be able to go into Michael's and get everything. Of course, I knew they had craft supplies there, but I didn't realize how expansive their party supplies were. And Michael's really is where you can go to get everything for a party, whether you're planning a kid's birthday or even an adult celebration.

1:10:12They've got over 4 ,500 party supplies, more than 60 different themes, and prices starting at just 99 cents. Plus, they've recently lowered prices on hundreds of items. We found adorable decorations, balloons, everything we needed to pull the party together without making a bunch of different shopping trips. Plus, I always have a good time going to Michael's. I love shopping there. I could just browse the aisles forever. But if you're short on time, like I always seem to be, you can also get same-day delivery or buy online and pick up at the store. They even offer free helium inflation on select balloon styles, which is such a lifesaver, and it was for our party, truly.

1:10:49So if you've got a birthday coming up or just a celebration, remember Michael's Everything to Celebrate Anything. Visit Michael's in-store or shop online now.