And We're Back

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I'm like, hell, yeah, you have sex during tournaments.

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Speaker 2: It looks like an old Navy knockoff bargain bin kit.

00:00:06
Speaker 1: That you love her, she's great.

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Speaker 2: Who doesn't love me?

00:00:08
Speaker 3: No, not you, you idiots.

00:00:33
Speaker 1: Pretty totallyad My mic isn't quite a lady.

00:00:38
Speaker 2: There we go, day, Caitlin, We're back.

00:00:40
Speaker 1: Hey, we are back. I know barely everybody, We barely made it back. We've copped a lot of abuse on Twitter, the odd Instagram message where is the pod?

00:00:52
Speaker 2: Where's the pope?

00:00:53
Speaker 1: When are you coming back?

00:00:54
Speaker 2: Come back now?

00:00:55
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, so I'll be perfectly honest because it's not really your f it's more my fault if not get well. I was a little busy at the start of the years coaching. I was doing television, and then you know, you got to get players for a good forty five minutes at least for this pod, and to get players to sort of give you forty five minutes of their time is a little tough even for me to find time between my schedule and their schedule on the road. It was a little tough. So we kind of we kind of put it into the backboner for a little bit, and we thought, and you came up with a great idea.

00:01:28
Speaker 2: I mean, in my mind, we were always going to do season one and season two because you need you need a minute.

00:01:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Game of Thrones.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to take your time, keep the people waiting. That's right.

00:01:37
Speaker 1: Speaking of Game of Thrones.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, how did you.

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Speaker 1: Feel about the ending? Let's be let's have about your honest true answer.

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Speaker 2: I thought it was unearned and I feel like it was a show about a sociological study that turned into a show about a character driven arc in an unearned manner.

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Speaker 1: Oh my, see, this is when you're masked.

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Speaker 2: I don't know what. Look, the Game of Thrones used to be like the Wire. It was more about the systems than the individual people breaking the chains, exactly breaking the wheel. Then in the last season they decide to make it like this character focused drama and people are doing shit that you're never like. You're like, that's not your character to.

00:02:15
Speaker 1: Danny, Well, but wasn't it. Denny's really when you think back to the start of the show, she was a little cry cry.

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Speaker 2: She was always unapologetic. I kind of mean, more like Tyrian all of a sudden, he like can't figure out how to like conduct a battle, or Sansa or the sircy Lanister. All these guys are doing dumb stuff and You're like, no, no, no, you're in your positions of power because you're ruthless. So what happened? Now you guys are making dumb decisions. So Danny, but also the rest of the characters.

00:02:41
Speaker 1: Now, I think in the end, like my my my thought was listening to stocks what they deserved, which was to rule the world. That's true, right, because they were the real they were the honest, good people, like deep down inside they were the good.

00:02:53
Speaker 2: See, this is what I'm talking about. This is a character driven vision as opposed to a system driven All right, enough about Game of Throne. Nobody's but you know what's great. We took our time. We got some amazing interviews this season. I'm really jazzed about it obviously, and if you look at season number one, we launched it right around this time June, and this next chrisy Evert with Chris Evertt. It's hard to type Chris Evertt. We could never tap Chris Evertt. We have somebody who sits along the Pantheon of Stars as our first guest. We'll get to that in a minute on this season, but before we do, we thought we'd spend this episode sort of catching everybody up. We got a ton of questions, a ton of response. When you pulled out the call on Twitter about what people wanted to hear us talk about.

00:03:30
Speaker 1: It turns out a lot, a lot, and I wrote them all down.

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Speaker 2: Game of Thrones was that one.

00:03:34
Speaker 1: It was not one of those, but I'm sure everybody was thinking, what did we think of Game of Throne?

00:03:39
Speaker 2: Great point?

00:03:39
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, who doesn't want to know what you've got to think? Uh So we got it. As you said, we got a lot, a lot of And it's during the French Open that we're doing this, and you know, we turned the TV on them. Watch a little bit of Tennis Channel's coverage of the French Open, and I will say, for the first couple of days, Tennis Channel plus not working. And there's a lot of Twitter.

00:03:59
Speaker 2: Hate been believing me.

00:04:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, because when you pay that money, you want that stuff to work, and you've got one major for the year, you got to get it right. Come on, So for two days you couldn't even see matches on Tennis Channel.

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Speaker 2: Plus, I just assumed it was my phone.

00:04:14
Speaker 1: You did, you like, my phone is not working. We're watching the match at a bar, not drinking. We were having brunch, We're having lunch. Yeah, and I couldn't. I was getting it through my TV, like my cable, through my phone, and you were trying to pull up the Tennis Channel app because we were trying to watch our buddy Andrew Pekovic, that's right, who won a who won a brutal got the.

00:04:36
Speaker 2: First round, three setter against Ali Rest. Yeah, I mean yeah, but we were watching Syriana simultaneously. Tennis Channel now it's back better. I'm delighted to see that. Our girl Mary Carrillo shout out to former pod Gast. Yeah, the Davenport obviously, it's part of the Tennis Channel. You know, a lot of a lot of love for elements of the Tennis Channel app experience. The first couple of day is not very good. Hopefully it will be better because I do pay for it.

00:04:59
Speaker 1: Hopefully it'll just work for because the thing is that the great thing about streaming now is that you know, whether it's Tennis Channel or ESPN, is that you can get you get to watch other matches. Now. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to watch Ralphil Nadal or Djokovic win six two six two six one and sit on that match for two hours, not even because it was an hour and a half. It's like it's a blowout. It's boring, Like, let's get to some really great matches. And there's a lot of great matches. And that's the thing about TC plus and also ESPN when they're streaming, is that you can flip over to those other courts and watch actually good tennis. That's entertaining.

00:05:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always I'm always here for the tough, the surrounders instead of the blowoutside. I don't care about seeing the stars. I want to see a hard, fart match. Well.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: One of the things that was discussed was just yesterday when they had to stop a lot of really great matches in the third set. And my first thought is, hello, how about some lights? French Open. It is interesting, like you build a frickin roof, but you don't put lights. And I know that it's a problem because of the neighborhood. It's kind of like a Wimbledon, there's a cutoff time. Yeah, but the cutoff time surely is not nine pm. It's surely got to be at eleven like at Wimbledon, you know where they have the lights, and at every other tournament we play under lights in Rome and Madrid, whatever. So why els the FFT can't put some lights at least on center court or on a couple of the match courts, the bigger match courts, so we get the match done. Because it's so unfair for the players to have to come back the next day. First of all, it's a freaking nightmare of sleep on that and you don't sleep. We've got to get up the next day, play a match, and then you subsequently then have to play the day after.

00:06:31
Speaker 2: Well. I also think it's probably not fair to spectators who buy a ticket, Oh my god, I want to finish the match, because you hear them booing, and they're not booing because the players aren't making a great effort, or because they don't love tennis. They're booing because it has to end, right, And it's it's strange if you're not gonna build lights, or if you have some sort of like ordinance in the neighborhood, like balloon, which is the neighborhood in Paris where they play, or in Wimbledon village, which is it's near the Boulogne. But it's if you're never gonna build lights, And why do I just start matches earlier? Is eleven?

00:07:01
Speaker 1: Like eleven's fine. Ten would be brutal. It's tough. I mean the thing you have to understand when you are a player, when you play a match at ten o'clock. And our buddy Andrew Pekovic will tell you about this. She hates playing that early because it takes her a long time to get a body going because she's old, had a few injuries. But you know, you got to get up at like six in the morning to get going for a match at ten o'clock. At least you know you're warming up at eight thirty maybe you know eight thirty nine. Then you're having to stretch and get ready and shower and for a ten o'clock match. So I mean, you have to get really really early, which everyone's like, oh why not golfers do it, But it's physical, you know, physical matches tennis, you've got to be ready from the gay.

00:07:37
Speaker 2: It's not a sport, as we can Yeah, it's a game. It's a game.

00:07:39
Speaker 1: It's a tough game, but it's a game. So yeah, So a lot of people brought that up, Caitlin about the lights. Yeah, Hawkeye was another thing. Now, I would go through everybody who sent us the question should we do that, like give them a shout out or it's just too complicated. I've got the questions written down. You know who you are.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: Thank you if you submitted a question. Yes, hawkeye thing, Let's let's stay with that for a second. So Hawkeye, as we all know, the electronic uh sort of line keeping system in place on many, many, many hard core events, obviously the slams, not and on grass, not on clay, because there is this theory that it is off, and it's so off on clay that it renders it virtually unusable. So instead it's the one surface there. You see the umps getting out of their chair, going down, inspecting ball lines, pointing and then calling uh calling.

00:08:26
Speaker 1: Doing the little squiggly round e see see I can see the round hole.

00:08:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that personally, you do.

00:08:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you want to keep no hawkeye on clay.

00:08:36
Speaker 2: I don't know that it's accurate enough to trust it.

00:08:39
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something.

00:08:39
Speaker 2: You might know bettert me.

00:08:41
Speaker 1: Let me give you the opposite argument of this. You cannot trust ump Okay, yeah, I cannot trust. I mean, I'm not saying they're like in it to like screw you, but their eyes aren't perfect all the time. And you do see often on clay, for example, and they clean the court and then they do the lines with the little brush, right, and so when they do the brush, it takes not only the clay off the line, but it actually leaves sort of a little bit on the side as well. So I don't even know how to describe that to people out there that haven't seen it. But they're not just cleaning the line. It's outside of the line. So if a ball hits just off of the line, for example, you don't know if it's hit the line or not because you don't have any clay there.

00:09:22
Speaker 2: Your play has.

00:09:23
Speaker 1: Been swept off by the little sweeper thing, so it's not accurate as well, like the site for the umpires, And I mean we've seen some absolute huge blow ups, including myself on the court where I've had an umpire come out of the chair and I've pointed to a mark that I am I've seen it didn't hit the line because the clay didn't come off the line. Blah blah blah. They come, oh no, no hit the line, so it didn't hit the freaking line.

00:09:43
Speaker 2: Well, there was a really horrific ending of the match. Rileyo Pelke. I think it was in Leon the week before the French Open match point through it set tiebreak. The ball he felt was clearly long, and subsequent sort of Twitter analysis makes a pretty compelling case that it was long. There wasn't a Greek camera, but it seemed pretty clear that it was not.

00:10:01
Speaker 1: In the type of guy also that wouldn't blow up.

00:10:04
Speaker 2: Doesn't seem like a blow up. He seems chill. Match point guy hits it along, he puts his arms up to celebrate, umpire calls it in, gets out of the chair. Argument and so who's ends up losing the match?

00:10:15
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking. Now, here's the opposite, here's the.

00:10:17
Speaker 2: I mean, you can always called out the worst case scenario to make the argument, but in that case it's it's horrific. I mean, this guy loses a match.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: Look at the year before carolinea Plischkov in Rome like basically tried to be a lumberjack and take down the umpire's chair with the hit. And and everybody has seen that video. I mean that ball was inside the line. It wasn't even it was either on the line or inside the line, but it was definitely not outside of the line. And the umpire claimed that she couldn't find the ballmark or no, no, came out of the came out, excuse me, came out of the chair and pointed at some random mark, and it was like, dude, it wasn't even close to where it was. So for me, the bottom line is, and this is how I feel about hawkeye. It takes away the human element and the human decision.

00:10:56
Speaker 2: I don't have any plan, and there's.

00:10:58
Speaker 1: No one to argue with if you're if you're a player, you know if you got screwed on a hawkeye, even if you thought it was wrong, you know your opponent's gonna get screwed on a hawkeye. It's the same system. It's not sitting up there. It's blind judgment and that's what plays like. And you don't want to have an argument like in a Pelka situation. He would just say challenge and if the hawkeye said whatever it was, he wouldn't argue it.

00:11:18
Speaker 2: He would just know it is the system. I agree with you, and furthermore so you've changed my mind. And furthermore, whenever the my well, congratulations. Whenever the audience at home sees a better version of the game than what is on the screen, whether it's baseball with the strike zone or a call in football or whatever it is, it's frustrating because if we have the technology to show the people at home a better mark, then certainly that should be. What's I've just heard the hawkeye and Clay is not reliable and that's not the case.

00:11:48
Speaker 1: We have the technology.

00:11:49
Speaker 2: Okay, great, just being one.

00:11:51
Speaker 1: Okay, so like hawke lights, hawkeye late name, set match, game set match. Okay. Another thing was a little bit about from Kimmy. I do know. This was about the scheduling going into the French Open, Kiah, how it is to get a schedule right, you know, and a lot of players, for example, pull out the week before a French Open or a Wembled and a Grand Slam. Someone in Ash Buddy's case, who was scheduled to play you know, Rome, Madrid, Strasbourg French Open, Like, why would you do that? As a player and I said, the reason is because players pick their schedule because they have to. They have to do it months in advance. There are certain tournaments that you have to play, depending on where your ranking is at. You have to play those events the in support of those events, and you know, a lot of them sign up because they think, well, if I do shit in Rome or in Madrid, I need matches before the French Open. So we enter those tournaments thinking it's a bit of a backup, right. So then of course, you know, someone like Ash did very well in Rome and Madrid probably felt like she'd had a ton of tennis already, which she has, and you know pulls out with an air you know, I'm doing air quotes injury, and you know, pulls out of the tournament to go to the French And I say, well, why do they enter us? So well, they don't really have much of a choice, so it's kind of a shitty system. But also at the same time, tournaments have to promote the players and put them on posters, so it is a bummer when they pull out, but it's sadly it's the nature of the beast.

00:13:16
Speaker 2: I have two points of feedback there, one of which is my general attitude is to always sort of support the player, believe the player, do whatever makes the player in a you know, in the best headspace, physical space to be able to compete. Right. So, like, I'm pretty sympathetic when it comes to coaching or scheduling, Like I always like to give them a benefit of the doubt because it's just so insanely hard what they do. And the second thing is, and this is kind of more of a broad point about media, but like I would like to go back to a day when the tournaments didn't rely so much on who's coming and more about you're going to see some great tennis. You're going to be in a beautiful place, You're going to be in a great city, and we've gotten a great field for you, full stop, right, And that to me is why I go, I don't oh no, going to be in that.

00:13:58
Speaker 1: You are a rarety and not I want if you're a tennis fan, that is a true I'm.

00:14:03
Speaker 2: Here for the tennis. There's many people a lake, but my days that've been ruined. If I'm not going to say, oh no, Vika's out, I can God bless him, Benoir, you love him. I do he's your favorite. Maybe really I love the lunatics. What can I say?

00:14:18
Speaker 1: I wonder where friends exactly? So, so that was it? So that that's another reason why you know, they do have to take care of and guess what, sometimes there are legit injuries where they really aren't good. Look at Petrikovitva who had to pull out you know the day.

00:14:31
Speaker 2: Look, I'm willing if if an injury is a mental health or exhaustion, that counts to me as an injury. All right.

00:14:36
Speaker 1: Mental health was another one that was brought up. How difficult is the mental health side of sport in general? And I can answer that question, and it's very important.

00:14:48
Speaker 2: You know.

00:14:48
Speaker 1: One of the things that I wish i'd done when I played was meditate, for example. I don't think enough players do that because sort of pulls you away from the ups and the downs and the you know, the positives and negatives and you know, any most I'd say a lot of players will tell you losing is really hard. It's really emotionally hard on you. You go into these dark places and you know, I think it was Katie Swan was a Katie Swan who wrote something recently about how difficult it was, and the expectation on you, and plus you have to remember it's life. It's your life, like how you make money, it's how you get through and everybody out there will know.

00:15:20
Speaker 2: But the job, I mean, it's like it's a twenty four to seven job. You're in it all the time. You can't clock out at six and be like, Okay, well, I guess I'm done today. It was a shit day at work. I guess I'll just stream Game of Thrones. It's like, no, you're in a foreign city having to deal with like now a ten hour flight home with you know, before I was supposed.

00:15:37
Speaker 1: To yeah or match point, Oh what if I've done this? And you ruminate over these losses so much. You know it's only one winner every single week, and you know it's often not you, So having to deal with that is tough. And now you've got the social media aspect of everything, so you know these players are getting like whether it be because you know people are abusing them on social medias they bet on the match, that's a point.

00:15:58
Speaker 2: It's just it is so if you're a shit sack person who's berating a player, especially if you're getting turned off misogynistic, racist, whatever. Yeah, just walk into traffic. I mean just no, thanks, like, get out of here, come to New York.

00:16:13
Speaker 1: Don't look up, just walk okay, just walk into traffic exactly. Yeah. I mean, seriously, if you're betting on if you're betting on first of all, if you're betting on anything, and then you think someone's like done something you know, mischievous to you and deliberately lost, give me a break. You're betting, Yeah, you're betting, yeah, on sports, like it doesn't happen where the winner is supposed to always, you know, is the favorite, right. I mean I bet on the Kentucky Derby and got screwed right because the horse got taken down because it sort of took out three horses and that's the way it goes. I mean I would have won money.

00:16:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are money. These are human beings that people are jumping into and shout out to Madison Keyes, by the way, who's done an incredible job and continues to do an incredible job talking about bullying really and endlessly. So Girl is her nonprofit and also pulling in a ton of other women, both and men, both on the tennis world, from the tennis world, but also outside to sort of talk about like, let's not abuse and bully people. I mean, Jesus Christ, we have to tell these people what to do this stuff like I'm a mom, Like I'm just you know, I'm ready to take some twigs to people on the playground. That's how it feels, take some toys to people. Twigs, Oh twigs. Yeah, it's not really going to do much. That's not I don't forget I said that anyway.

00:17:23
Speaker 1: So all right, so that's that's aspect of it. So basically, yes, it's very, very hot, and there are a lot of top players that will tell you they've locked themselves in hotel rooms so days and not come out.

00:17:31
Speaker 2: But shout out to people who are talking about it and making this you know, not only if your job is insanely difficult, but just generally mental health, like talk about it, go to therapy, to self care, meditate, whatever you need to do. Like that's I really am not that, No, absolutely not, And I think that that's an amazing thing when we have athletes who are talking about how Kiki bertends is another one. Yeah, close to retirement two years ago now number four four in the world, but a couple of years ago she's thinking about hanging it all up because she's just like this life is punishing and grueling, and she defined my happiness.

00:17:59
Speaker 1: It's really because it dictates your happiness and that's what sucks. And a lot of people say, no, that's where you know, Roger's a bit of a unicorn because even when he loses, he's pretty okay. Well he fucking wins all the time, that's why. But you know, and he's got one hundred million dollars in the bank, so that helps, all right. So onto another subject. Let's talk a little bit about some of the players. Somebody asked me about Joe Contact it's nice to see her back well and why, But I say, she's a little bit like Muga Rutha in some respects. The way she hits the ball, it's all real flat, really sort of very deliberate with everything that she does. So when the confidence is there, then she's super accurate with everything, you know, groundie serving her confidence is up, But when the confidence goes down, it's no real game playing. Beasts a lot of feel to her game, you know, sort of like Mugo Rutha, and she's on, she's on, and they are similar in the way that they play, I feel everything starts with the serve and then the ground is so But on the aspect of having her back in finals and doing well, yay golf clap for are because we need Nita out there and she's a terrific plan and a great kid.

00:19:03
Speaker 2: So it seems like a lovely person And actually maybe this is wrong, but it seems like she managed to pick up some steam from fed Cup. She yes came a good point and Bolter and Swan and Heather Watson one of my favorites. Like these guys dug deep and kept great Britain in the world group with a pretty gutsy win over Kazakhstan. Not a lot of people watch fed Cup. I'm dropping like.

00:19:24
Speaker 1: People don't realize how many play. It is a from Kazakhstan, a lot of a lot of transplants.

00:19:29
Speaker 2: A lot of trens exactly put and save up namely, but like what I loved about that is a team competition, a sort of not widely viewed, at least not in probably this country competition gives this kid some wind in her sails, and then she gets back out there and has sort of a resurgence this year. So I think that's really cool. I mean, you could look at Djokovic and Serbia's Davis Cup, you know, strong, strong showing as the start of his streak where he like won every what it was.

00:19:55
Speaker 1: For another nolee slams. Yeahsion, It's amazing when you think about the fact that we've got Rougher going for possible twelve, You've got Novak going for a possible Nola Slam again, and you've still got Roger up there competing the way he is and winning, you know, one hundred titles in Miami and then subsequently what he's done since. But it's like we have the greatest period of men's tennis at the same time. It's you've got three the three greatest players of all time are playing at the same time. I mean, men's tennis is really lucky. But FYI, they will be They will be retiring soon, which brings me to one of the next questions about when do you retire?

00:20:35
Speaker 2: Retire?

00:20:36
Speaker 1: What's the catalyst between all right, I'm hanging them up?

00:20:39
Speaker 2: And the question was centered around Federer who's now thirty seven, Venus who's thirty eight, thirty nine.

00:20:44
Speaker 1: Thirty eight going on thirty nine, you know Serena. Serena's obvious Shapov with her injuries, et cetera. When she's gonna retire.

00:20:53
Speaker 2: What's your thought on that?

00:20:54
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's a little bit mixed back, to be honest, a lot of it. You know, Roger's even spoken about this physicality times. It's you know, the injuries and it just becomes too much to get injured and come back three or four months later, which is in a tremendous amount of time for somebody who's in their mid thirties. So it's like putting the work in to get the rehab done, blah blah blah, particularly if you have enough money to retire and never worry about it, which a lot of these players obviously do. But and then it's the mental side of it. You know. Chrisy everas I spoke to her about it, and she said that it was it was a lot more mental for her. It was just emotionally, it was just too draining. Plus she wanted her family and blah blah blah. So obviously for women that some of it does come down to that, like also when is it right to stop? And Casey de Lac was talked about that, and she was playing really well and doubles making a lot of money, and you know that sets you up for your life, right, And her girlfriend was like, oh, shure, you don't want play a couple more years. Yeah, she was making very good money. So that's a hard decision. But for me, I was old, I mean relatively speaking, were you, I would go back to thirty three? No, no, no, I was at thirty nine. I think was the last Grand Slam, and I think I stopped not long after that the next year. Maybe I was thirty nine or forty. But it's just just putting in the hard work. It's like doing all the every day waking up and knowing you have to go to the gym and go to practice, and the ups and the downs, and the travel and being away, and if you're really happy in your personal life, do you want to travel? Can your partner travel? That becomes hard as well. You know, do you have somebody who's got a nine to five job that can't take off and travel with you all the time. So I think a lot of it has to do with that. It's sort of the men are pretty lucky because usually.

00:22:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, they haven't accommodating woman.

00:22:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's so easy for a guy just to hang it up and sort of travel with these women. It's a bit of both.

00:22:37
Speaker 2: I want to shout out to the gentleman Jonathan and James who do a really fantastic podcast out of Toronto called The Body Serve. It's the best tea serving podcaster is out there. A lot of gossip, a lot of heart takes. It's really great. I love it. And they said something to me because I was like, oh god, yeah, venus man, why did she hanging it up? And they were like, she loves it. You don't get to decide. You don't get we don't get to decide when these plays hang it up. If they are having the time of their life out there, if they are finding the motivation to do all those hard things that you just talked about. I think if somebody likes Fetlana Kuznatz of a Rate, got a couple of slams, made all the money she needs, She's doing great. I mean, follow her Instagram if you want to see somebody live in their best life. She's in Italy right now.

00:23:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, but she's not playing well.

00:23:17
Speaker 2: She's not playing well, But you know what, who is it? Who are we to decide that she shouldn't hang it up if she can still get into tournaments and win them.

00:23:22
Speaker 1: Hey man, I agreed.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: So it changed my mind talking to those guys because I was like, you know what, You're right, it's not my decision if they can still play it.

00:23:29
Speaker 1: Some people will go down, like someone like uh Lisa Raymondois said, Look, if I'm not doing well, if I'm not having the results I want, I don't want to freaking do this anymore. Like I get that I've had a standard of X, and I don't want to be at AB. I want to be doing well. I want to be win. If I don't feel like I contend, yeah, that I can contend to win tournaments, I don't want to play anymore. So there's some top players that have had great success that really feel that way, and there's some that just go like Venus, for example, who just love it. They love playing, they love practicing, they love having a purpose. I mean Roger's like that. Yeah, he loves playing tennis, he loves the a duration, he loves the no and look about.

00:24:05
Speaker 2: It, Venus and Roger are still making Slam finals, you.

00:24:08
Speaker 1: Know, like Serena is gonna be interesting for me for the rest of this year and maybe next, you know how much because she knows she's she's got this beautiful baby with her all the time, and you know, she's got a lot of interests outside of tennis now, which he has always had. But I just you know, at some point, for someone like Serena, for example, if she's not winning the tournaments, that's the person that would be like fuck this. Yeah, you know, like if I'm not really contending. Obviously, look last year, two finals the Grand Slam, so she's still contending. So yeah, I think that, well, she's that type of For Venus, I think it's a little bit less. But for Serena, she's not winning them or getting the finals and really contending, that's when at times she'll be like, Okay, I'm done. I don't need to do I don't need to prove anything to anymore anymore.

00:24:56
Speaker 2: While we were talking about Serena, and you mentioned Na a little bit earlier, let's talk about fashion. This is something that on my other tennis podcast that I record very intermittently on the main draw.

00:25:08
Speaker 1: And it was asked of us by a lot of people on Twitter.

00:25:10
Speaker 2: We talked about fashion. A lot of people want to hear our take on fashion. I'm ready with some very blazing, blazing takes. The Nike Kit, the sort of basic generic Nike kit. Kyle Edmunds in it, born of korch Vika, Daria Kasatkina.

00:25:25
Speaker 1: Likes, that's right, look at my Parends.

00:25:29
Speaker 2: Who doesn't love me? Caroline Garcia it's it's kind of this like power clashing tool Nike black on white, kind of weird pattern stuff. I love it. I think it's really cool and weird and I'm here for it. It's kind of a lot, but I like when the brands do something a little crazy, and I think for the most part they carried it off. Two notable Nike exceptions. Holy shit, does Rafa look bad? What the f is that outfit? The choose it's a nightmare. It's it's like neon blue and yellow and there's some kind it looks like an old Navy like knockoff bargain bin kit. And then del Potrow also not they gave him some sort of like the off brand kind of like there's a brown in there and like a mustard yellow. No, just everyone looks cool in that black on black just keep it black on black. I think that's great. Two others Vetterer, what so bad? He's he looks like a he looks like a postal delivery man, but worse because I actually think the US Postal service outfits are kind of cute, not cute.

00:26:33
Speaker 1: I could say I could see you walking around in that.

00:26:35
Speaker 2: I thank you.

00:26:35
Speaker 1: I'm wearing a short ones to die and it's like it's like sixty five degrees.

00:26:40
Speaker 2: It was a little colder that I anticipated, not my greatest. And then the women's side, a lot of people, obviously after last year's bodysuit watching What's Serena? This is the Virgil Ablow sort of special kit. Do you think you like it? Like it? You like it? You think it's kit? I like the mesh a loot. Yeah.

00:26:58
Speaker 1: And the couple of the feeler outfits. What's amazing the feel is that they the companies just so everybody knows that they don't pick this like two weeks ago, you know, and go, oh that's cool, let's put them in there. This has done years in events like for example, I can tell you Carolina Pushkovers feel a kid. She knew exactly what she was wearing in February this year, so she'd already done her filming and her pictures in Miami in February for her entire line for the year. So the year is done, so you can't you know. So everyone was like, oh, why are they? And and I know a lot of people are pissed off that, you know, everyone's in the same gear. It's like, why don't they have separate stuff for the players and when they're playing against each other and they're in the same outfit. That's the way it is. Kids, like, that's what they're trying to sell that outfit in the stores. It's just so happens that Nike.

00:27:46
Speaker 2: The same things.

00:27:47
Speaker 1: A lot of players bothers me lass Pam Shriver hates it.

00:27:50
Speaker 2: A lot of people hate it.

00:27:51
Speaker 1: She hates it.

00:27:51
Speaker 2: Our friend Craig Shapiro, who hosts another really good podcast Under Review, he hates it. I don't mind it as much. I just mind the eye bleeding outfits. So to continue on that note, the FILA shout out to our creative director Danielle A Delpercio, who shot all those things with with Kaya. I like, I think the FILA stuff looks really great.

00:28:08
Speaker 1: I think FILA has done a great job for me too.

00:28:10
Speaker 2: I think it's really great. The Adida stuff I found kind of bland.

00:28:12
Speaker 1: Well, it's they're gentleman. I mean, don't take offense out there, No.

00:28:14
Speaker 2: But listen, we're doing how they are speaking to your point about knowing well. In Advance, Racket Magazine is doing a capsule collection with Adidas Cool Tennis for you. Thank you. I did us for the US Open twenty twenty. So not only do we know exactly this points, I mean I haven't seen all the fas.

00:28:30
Speaker 1: Amazing how you'll twenty You'll turn up in the US Open twenty twenty and everyone will have the same color scheme.

00:28:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, what the fuck?

00:28:38
Speaker 1: Did you guys all get together and go let's go black and white?

00:28:40
Speaker 2: Maybe they did? Maybe that.

00:28:41
Speaker 1: Seriously, it's amazing how it happens. I'm like, what, everyone's in fluo?

00:28:44
Speaker 2: What you know?

00:28:46
Speaker 1: So it's like it's like it's like an NIX and like it's like a watergate. Do they do? They have like speakers and they're going, they're going fluoro happened Inlara.

00:28:54
Speaker 2: It's neon this here. Everyone hold on to your hats. Yeah, yeah, I kind of I don't say I don't think it's a I think generally the Nike stuff is getting the most buzz in a bad way. But I am here to defend it because I think it's really good. Uniclo, I don't know, that's just a train wrapping what happened. I don't know, Like I don't need fus. See.

00:29:11
Speaker 1: There's some players, like a sharp over Serena Roger, I'm sure in Nola to some extent, have a say in what they've seen and giving it approval. So misters Federer is quite the metrosexual.

00:29:26
Speaker 2: Okay, that's kind of thing we say anymore. Now we say, like, what do we say fashionable? Because everyone's mantrosexual? Now have you noticed everyone's queer? Yeah, it's great.

00:29:34
Speaker 1: Listen, Matt Ebden is not well no, actually no, not Matt Adam. I'm thinking of Johnny Millman, you know. But listen, here's the deal. He he would have some he's got to have some say in what. I can't imagine he put that on and went, yeah, Anna Winter would love this.

00:29:48
Speaker 2: I mean, look Anna get involved.

00:29:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:29:50
Speaker 2: True, he needed an intervention. He looks so.

00:29:52
Speaker 1: Bad anyway, but he's still looking good.

00:29:54
Speaker 2: Well, his game looks good.

00:29:55
Speaker 1: Sure, all right, you know, just to really sort of sidestep you here, it was nobody asked sex during tournaments. I'm like, hell, yeah, you have sex during tournaments.

00:30:05
Speaker 2: I mean it depends.

00:30:06
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example if oh, I'll give you my example. But I'm just giving you examples in general. If you win and you had sex, you were going to have sex again because you want to win. It's all. It's about winning. And if you won a tournament and you didn't have sex that week, you are not having sex ever again when you played tennis.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: But I think what the question was getting at. Oh, it's like, remember this headline from the UK papers way long ago, because Boris Becker like failed to you know where I'm going with this. I think I'd never forget it. The headline was too much sex beats Big Boris because the implication was that Boris Becker was and then we all know that he did likes a cocktail waitress and a flight attendant given to who he's you know, fathered.

00:30:47
Speaker 1: But we love Boris.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: I love Boris. I is a confirmed lesbian. I find him like devastating.

00:30:52
Speaker 1: You actually have to actly have told me that that's it's.

00:30:54
Speaker 2: So strange He's very attractive to me. I mean, I'm not the only one. Like women all over the world if Lily Yeah, anyway, and I like his tasting women. He's got great taste in women. You're typed totally anyway, Boris. The headline was too much sex big Boris, meaning off the court, he was partying, depleting his energy.

00:31:12
Speaker 1: Mabe. I think what what it should have if he was going out and party. I don't think the sex was the problem. I think maybe he'd had a drink or two.

00:31:18
Speaker 2: The other thing.

00:31:19
Speaker 1: I mean, usually when you drink too much, it's not so good for your tennis. Sex is definitely not It's it can be a positive or negative. And as I said, if if you do it and you win the next day, clearly you or forever and ever say oh that's fine.

00:31:32
Speaker 2: No, no, no, not to go too deep on this, but the no of courss uh. The collegiate n Cuba scene was especially at like big tournaments. It was sort of like an orgy. I mean it was just like what is going on, Like who's hooking up with hill offence?

00:31:46
Speaker 1: But those are college players, you know.

00:31:49
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that everyone's like fit and board. You know, we've got lots of time on her hands, and we're like, you know.

00:31:55
Speaker 1: You're basically saying that that's.

00:31:57
Speaker 2: It was fun, It was a good time.

00:31:58
Speaker 1: You went to college I did not. Okay, there you go that you've.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: There was some a lot of downsides playing college tennis. That was not one of them.

00:32:03
Speaker 1: All right, So why don't tournaments show pre and postmatch interviews was one question as well. And okay, so being in television, I can tell you a lot of it has to do with trying to get commercials in. So sometimes producers or directors will producers will just say, look, we've got to get some commercials in here. We don't really care about the postmatch interview. Could be somebody you know that's doing the interview that you don't want on new television screen. Or there's lots of reasons. You know, ESPN sometimes will be up against a hard out we call it. So at six pm we've got to get to Sports Center or whatever, and it's five point fifty nine. We don't have time to show the postmatch interview or the trophy ceremony. And you know, we get so much shit when we don't show the trophy ceremony. Which I'm also very against. And you watch a player play for two and a half three hours and you want to hear them talk after a match and thank their people. But sometimes, you know, and as you know, Caitlin, and live television or television schedules, you can't push them back. So there's somebody that could be wanting that sports center that doesn't give.

00:33:02
Speaker 2: A shit like why is this starting five minutes.

00:33:05
Speaker 1: Leah, So you know that's often the reason why.

00:33:07
Speaker 2: But I will shout out the streaming services TC plus, ESPN plus a lot of the tournaments, and the radio. We don't talk a lot about the radio, but I think the radio coverage does a lot great job. This week you could be listening to Radio Rolangaros. They have a lot of interviews with players. They cut to a lot of the press conferences, so all the things I just mentioned. They will oftentimes not only show you know, the entirety of the match, including the post match interview, but also they will show a lot of press conferences, which I think is really interesting. I mean, know, we watched Lebron in press conferences, we watch basketball, we watch a lot of other stuff Like I think it could and should be part of the culture where we're getting to hear what the players think, because I think it's totally fascinating. Great. Great.

00:33:44
Speaker 1: One of the other questions was sometimes about, you know, the TV's getting so good now, you know with HD five G you can.

00:33:51
Speaker 2: See someone's like black heads.

00:33:54
Speaker 1: It's not a joke. Actually, I was told one time when I started doing television, and remember everybody where your makeup because it's HD, dv FYI, you can see every freckle on your face.

00:34:04
Speaker 2: So you know.

00:34:05
Speaker 1: One of the things was what about the camera angles and how does that happen? I can tell you there's sometimes where people build a center court or a stadium and they don't think about where the fuck they're going to put the cameras. Oh, I can tell you can access which ones and I don't want to get into who exactly, but you guys know when you're watching television and you're watching tennis and you're like, Jesus Christ, this camera is so far away from the court. Yeah, didn't think about that, did they when they decided to build the stadium. So they're ding dongs, and you know, an ESPN will go and they'll do an on site check before. So when they're building a stadium that they'll actually ESPN will go or whoever's covering the tournament for whomever, will go and say, yeah, this is a great spot here, this is good, this is what the angle we want. And sometimes it's too close, sometimes too far away. But boy or boy, when you make in a stadium people, you've got to think about that.

00:34:54
Speaker 2: A lot of them on TV are too high, so bad. And the thing that I love and ESPN does is a lot which I really appreciate, is they put the camera or at least cut to the one angle where it's behind one of the players, and even though you can only really see one of the players and sort of in the far distance the other player, you get to see the speed of the court, and you get to see the size of the court. I think that camera angle is underused. I've been saying it for years because I really passionately believe in it, and I think it does the closest to taking people at home into the sort of tournament experience it does.

00:35:23
Speaker 1: I'm not a lover of that angle. I love it, but you know, that's a perfect example of why it's really important to show different angles. Yeah, when you're showing tennis because some people like it and some people don't.

00:35:32
Speaker 2: I also just think having the variety gets you to understand sort of both the size of the court, but also, you know, gives you a I think tennis is one of those sports. It's much better in person, and I think the better we can do to show it on TV, the more fans it'll have.

00:35:46
Speaker 1: So we're at the we're talking during the French Open. What do you think about the Sunday starts of the Grand Slams?

00:35:51
Speaker 2: I like them. I like them. It's a full day of weekend tennis that I can watch on my lapt at the tournament. I think it's great. Yeah, so do the players not like it? Is there any reason? Other Germans? So?

00:36:00
Speaker 1: I think a lot of players there's a bit of a pushback because it just feels like, oh shit, you know, we're having to start this earlier than you're coming from another tournament. So that's where it gets a little bit difficult. I personally would rather than just start on Monday, but as you said, you know, monetarily, like Wimbledon's never going to change, It'll start on Monday, but they don't have Sunday, which they're taking away a weekend day. Isn't that interested it is?

00:36:24
Speaker 2: You know they have the middle Sunday. They don't they're famous.

00:36:26
Speaker 1: Do you know how much players love that? I mean, you have no idea how much players appreciate that extra day of just kind of like being able to switch it off, because you don't switch You don't switch off, even even if you're in the tournament. But boy, for an hour or two, you can maybe switch off more than you can in another Grand Slam, and it's just that beautiful, wonderful Sunday, which is usually a really pretty day, and you just relax. You know, we appreciate as journalists.

00:36:49
Speaker 2: I can tell you that you were telling me that Racket magazine we usually have a party in London. I'm still trying to figure out what we're going to do this here, and you really send in your suggestions, send in your suggestions. You said you should do it on middle Saturday because everyone will come and get hammered. I was like, well, that's the spirit I meant it.

00:37:03
Speaker 1: I was like, the players out of the tournament will come and get hammered. Great, but the ones in the tournament will probably stay a little bit more.

00:37:09
Speaker 2: Well, listen, and it curious came to our last party and he was in the tournament before he was out of the tournament. Well, so we all know that shout out to him.

00:37:15
Speaker 1: That's shout out to Nikki. Yeah, okay, we love nick I do listen. There are parts of him that I wish would change, but overall, he's great for the game, just getting shit together. When are we going to let let's in? I want let's to be played. We've had this discussion. I want to see let's play.

00:37:31
Speaker 2: What do you find that they do in college?

00:37:33
Speaker 1: I think simple? Okay. A lot of people want to know about the coaching changes over this year, and we've seen a lot, particularly the women's game, the men's.

00:37:42
Speaker 2: We're talking when FA set, we're talking.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: Uh Kamal Murray, Murray Stevens. Yeah, yeah, there's been a lot of Listen, here's the deal with coaching.

00:37:52
Speaker 2: It's it's tough. It's like a marriage. It's like a relationship.

00:37:55
Speaker 1: You know, if you lose a match, for example, or you know, you've got to blame on somebody, Yes, that's often the coach, you know, or sometimes I just give you a shitty game plan it didn't work, or sometimes you get on the practice court you don't really like what they're practicing with you.

00:38:09
Speaker 2: Or sometimes the coaches ask for a ton more money, which I think is what apparently happened with Sashabajen and which is apparently I've heard that the Sashabaijen namios Haka thing was partly because of money. Wow.

00:38:20
Speaker 1: Interesting, I did not know that, And I can tell you, I mean, I know a lot of gossip obviously because I know a few people out there. Look, the bottom line is that, you know, relationships are won and done is sometimes, you know, and coaching is just the same. It's like it's not easy. Sometimes, as you said, money becomes a part of the equation, as it often does, and I can give you a couple of people like that. But others it's like the coaches is done with the player too. I mean, somebody tweeted, you know, I can't believe somebody hasn't worked on ostapenkos surf. She just double fault of sixteen times French Open first round and sixteen sixteen, well I think it was sixteen. And you know, how can you not work on her? Serve as a coach. I'm like, just let slipped that around for a second. Okay, there is a possibility that the players a freaking pain in the arse and doesn't want to change anything as well. I don't know. I haven't been on the court with her, you.

00:39:08
Speaker 2: Know, but it's not only the.

00:39:09
Speaker 1: Coach being the easiest personal work.

00:39:11
Speaker 2: Well, she seems like she's got some strong opinions.

00:39:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, sometimes it's about the player. If they don't want to change it, then they're not going to change it, And under pressure, they'll always go back to what.

00:39:20
Speaker 2: Was is most comfortable. And you know, in some cases with coaching, it's logistics.

00:39:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes it's well for with me and Plushkova for example, I mean it was tough. You know, I worked full time with ESPN at the Grand Slams, and you know, she wanted a little bit more sort of continuity. And when I brought Conchetah onto the into the team last US Open, you know, CONTI was a lot more available, you know, So it's just like made a little bit more sense for Carolina to keep her on board on a full time basis, and so it was, you know, then I was able to sort of let her go on that. Yeah, but I mean she's done very well done, you know, and she's definitely for me, she's studying to look like the favorite of the French. I mean, you know, Rome is always an indicator for me who will win the French Open if it's a competitive field, which it was in Rome. So for me, you know, that's why Rafa and plischkover now. I mean, I did you know hall Ups still my slight favorite at the French is because she's so good when she gets her teeth into the French Open, She's so good on the clay, and she suffered such a tough out. But you know, Caroline has the weapons and she can beat anyone, so you know, there's no doubt. And Conchi is a great influence and I think the thing that was passed on to her by myself and now the baton's been taken from Conchitita's passion for the game, you know, run for the balls, get after it, fight and she's won a lot of matches in the last seven months. She's three sets, very good in three sets, losing the first set, and that is something that she didn't really have before, was that. I mean, she always had desire and fight, but now I think the desire in the fight has ratcheted.

00:40:47
Speaker 2: Up finding that extra gear.

00:40:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there you go. So sometimes it's a little bit of logistics, sometimes it's money, and sometimes it's just you know what, you just need to go.

00:40:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's just a change sometimes. All right, we got only a few minutes left, So what are the more a sort of tantalizing questions that we've got from readers, And again, thank you guys so much for sending years, and we'll try to do this on a periodic basis because it's fun for us to obviously opine.

00:41:08
Speaker 1: Somebody asked about Wassniyaki. I'm having to deal with the I mean, listen, it's a bit, it's a nightmare, and she's struggling and she's obviously over the last few years has really had to deal with a lot of injuries, particularly to her knee. But you know, this is just an ongoing situation for her. And I think that here's a perfect example when when to retire. Yeah right, I mean, she's a great player who wanted has run a tremendous amount of tournaments, who's now engaged, obviously thinking about having a family, getting married, and she's not having the success that she's used to and dealing with injuries at the same time, it's kind of like, fuck this, this is too hard, you know, and it's disappointing and you and she practices and works out so hard and so much that at some point it's like, Okay, it's just getting too much now for me, and it's sad, and so listen, let's hope that she has a better back half of this year, because she deserves that. Is such a great ambassador for women's tennis, and you know, hopefully she sticks around for a lot longer because she's such a great name. But you know, at the same time, she's also a friend of mine. I want her to be happy, so if it means stopping and you know, getting on with their life. And she's got a nice little pad.

00:42:19
Speaker 2: Here in New York, Yeah a lot, Carolyn, where's my invoy to the rioftop cocktail party?

00:42:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's work on that.

00:42:26
Speaker 2: Maybe for her retirement, Maybe for her retirement party. And also I want to see Francesca Skivane a little bit more on corner, loving loving that she's coaching.

00:42:35
Speaker 1: I don't know how much he's going to be around now once she's on the grass and et cetera. But we'll see. But it's nice to see more women coaches. You know, the players are now starting to go oh oh they ah, they can think they've got actually pretty good ideas.

00:42:49
Speaker 2: So it turns out their vaginas don't get in the way of their brains a little bit thought.

00:42:53
Speaker 1: So yeah, so it's nice to see that.

00:42:55
Speaker 2: I read this amazing story. I'm going to get her name wrong, but the sixteen year old who just want to sort of wildcoach first round match one handed backhand, and people are asking her as we you know, we love one handed back through amazing podcast, Uh we were. A friend of mine was like, oh, do you see the scroad you see your match? I was like no, But turns out she has one handed backhand, and she goes, yeah, Emily Moresmo taught me this backhand. Why would I listen to anybody else?

00:43:14
Speaker 1: Yes, love that. Come on, I'm doing a high five, like, oh, I'm.

00:43:18
Speaker 2: Doing it for a feederer, I'm doing it because of Pizzanber's. It's like, no, Amalie Moresmo, Yeah.

00:43:22
Speaker 1: Come on, love it. There was no better more beautiful other than Justine. Justin Justine's one hand.

00:43:28
Speaker 2: It was not it was the prettiest bat one no, no, no, agree to disagree.

00:43:32
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fine, but and I'll get shipped from people, they'll tweet me. But it was a it was a little hectic that one hander. Okay, it was a little head flowing, like twisting all over the place.

00:43:42
Speaker 2: It was like Richa's gascades. It's a long, flowing straight.

00:43:45
Speaker 1: It was not that flowy. It was a little discombobulated and a little bit it was an unbelievable one hander. But when we're talking beauty of the one hander, like just the flowing one hander Maresmo Suarez Navarrovara, Okay, I mean round here, Francesca Us a little bit more like like muscled, you know, And that's the same as and then it's a little bit mustly. Now I had a lovely one handy. That's what you're supposed to come in. It's just beautiful.

00:44:10
Speaker 2: You're so beautiful, and yours it's beautiful. And you also did some really nice re engineering on mine. Thank you for them. It needed all right, Okay, well just take the compliment.

00:44:20
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good.

00:44:21
Speaker 2: Speaking of dicks, my favorite thing. We were talking a little bit earlier about.

00:44:25
Speaker 1: Your favorite saying, actually, bago.

00:44:27
Speaker 2: Dits bag of dicks, eat bag of dicks. Oh god, it's discussing. That's why it's a good insult one thing that I loved Courtney. And when our friend w t Insider Racket magazine contributing editor, she was talking about how shitty it is that not only do these female athletes get all these abuse about having a bad day and an off day, but really we don't talk about like menstruation, that's what we want to Oh my god, periods are a fucking nightmare. If guys had periods, you guys would be in the hospital. You'd be crying, You'd be getting like IV's, you'd be getting medicine. We'd have like national holidays. I mean, this shit is real and it's raw. I got into a fight with my college tennis coach, one of the worst coaches I've ever played under, by the way, what's his name, Blake Sturkey. What a terrible coach he was. He truly dick And I remember one time saying, oh my god, you look, I'm really having a rough day, Like I have such a bad period, like I can't play. I think we wouldn't still watter Oklahoma playing Oklahoma State or something like that, and he turns to me and he goes, gross, can you not talk about that? I was like, listen, you're the coach of a women's tennis team with a charge of being managing ten girls between the ages of eighteen.

00:45:30
Speaker 1: Periods.

00:45:31
Speaker 2: You can't handle the fact that I'm talking about my period. I wasn't saying like anything horrifically offens. It's not a lot different than I was saying, like, oh man, I twisted my ankle and I'm really having a rough time, Like, hey, can you.

00:45:41
Speaker 1: See any say, hey, my uters is falling out?

00:45:43
Speaker 2: That's how it feels something I said something closer to that, actually, But but look, can we not have a conversation about our periods?

00:45:50
Speaker 1: Like, let's have a conversation about it, because I can tell you for a fact that my first ever Olympics very excited. My best ever chance to win a medal at the Olympics was definitely the I was playing doubles with Nicole Bradkey, I'd lost my singles and I was getting ready to go and play for my first round and cramps just all of a sudden. I was like, oh my god, I feel so terrible. Oh wow. You know, everybody out there who's a woman's going, oh, I know how you feel. Yeah, And it got worse and worse and worse. I was on the next minute, you know, twenty minutes later, I'm on the ground. I'm just riling in pain. I mean, it's just so terrible and so the first time that had ever really happened to me. It's happened subsequently like ten times since then, where it's gotten so bad where I wanted to die. But I was literally on the I was throwing up. My doubles partner calls like, oh my god, are you okay, and I'm like no, We got called to go and play our match and I couldn't play. I couldn't play my first round of the Olympics.

00:46:42
Speaker 2: An Olympic match.

00:46:43
Speaker 1: I was rushed to the hospital. I was in so much pain. Finally they gave me. They couldn't give me anything at the courts because the drug policies at the Olympics. Had to go to the Olympic Drug at the Olympic Hospital, which was a forty minute drive, as you can imagine how terrible that was. And finally they gave me some like valium or something just calm me down, lacks me, I work up. It felt like it been hit by a truck, literally, and you know that happened. Immediately after that, I went to my gynecologist and I said, listen, I don't know what the fuck you can do about this, because I'm a woman. This isn't changing, but you need to help me here because this can never happen to me again. I could be walking under a goddamn Grand Slam final and that could have happened. And I said, I cannot have that. I cannot afford for that to happen. And so you know, I went on the pill, and you know it certainly helped in that regard, and a lot of players are on it because of it, and I know a lot of obviously a lot of lesbian players are on it. And it's not like we I'm worrying about getting pregnant, but this was just a regular monitor and regulate and also keep the pain down.

00:47:40
Speaker 2: Well, Courtney was saying, not only should we be like super mindful about like all the stuff that's going on, you know, out with women's bodies in particular that we don't know about who are professional athletes of our sports, but also the lack of empathy or the sort of like you know from male checking in being like, hey, how come bad could it be? And your response, I thought was the most perfect thing.

00:48:04
Speaker 1: How about this, guys, I'm gonna kick you in the dick? Okay, once a month for four days.

00:48:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, dick kicks.

00:48:11
Speaker 1: Like once one one, one time a day for four days. Na too, Let's do two days, because it's always two days that are just horrendous for all of us. Yeah, it's like two days of out month every every month is just ruined. Okay, So for two days every month, I'm gonna kick you in the dick. And let's see how you feel about that.

00:48:29
Speaker 2: We've got a fever and the only prescription is dick kicks.

00:48:33
Speaker 1: It's so true, It's true. But you know we've had this. I've had this conversation with Andrew PEKOVICI also, you know, struggles with a little Sam Stoza. I mean, I'm just like outing everybody's bad periods. But another thing is I had a problem one time we had to pull out of I think I got through the match, but I had such terrible back pain that I like it seized up on me and I couldn't work out why, and it didn't happen to me very often. And you know, I think I got through the match, but I realized that it was the next day was my period, and so every time I lower back got super tight and that I knew. Yeah, and you know, also I had back problems because of it. So yeah, let's let's bring it out there and talk about because it happens all the time. People.

00:49:11
Speaker 2: Well, this is just the kind of don't be a dick, dick, don't be a dick. This is kind of refreshing. Honestly, you're gonna get on this second season of the Racket Magazine podcast. We have some insanely good interviews. We're going to do it through the tour finals like we did last year, and then we'll take another break and collect more stories. I'm super excited to get to some of these interviews. Keep sending in your questions. Thank you guys so much for your fere A couple we didn't we didn't get we didn't get to all of them, but we'll we'll try to work them into upcoming episodes because we love talking to you guys. Obviously, we have opinions.

00:49:40
Speaker 1: We definitely have opinions.

00:49:42
Speaker 2: All right. On that note, Renee, it's lovely to be back in studio with you. You guys, stay tuned. This season is gonna mel your face.

00:49:48
Speaker 1: Thanks, guys, We love.

00:49:52
Speaker 2: And that's it for this episode of the Racket Magazine Podcast. Thanks for listening. Our host is Renee Stubbs. Our co host and producer is me Kaitlin Thompson. Music by internationally renowned DJ Stretch Armstrong, thanks to tim Or Jerran and the team at ACAST. Find us at racketmag dot com, slash podcast, and subscribe to us at any of your favorite podcatchers