AVOID MADRID

“Arkansas, SEC school gets rid of the tennis program. The 2025 financial report for Razorback Athletics was reported. And women's tennis and men's tennis are the least of the losers of all of the sports. Football is the only one football makes significant money, made $30,000,000. Men's basketball made $4,000,000. Then women's tennis lost 1,000,000. Men's tennis lost 1,200,000. Now every other sport that's on there, men's golf, women's golf, gymnastics, volleyball, swimming, diving, soccer, softball, baseball, track and field, and then women's basketball at the very bottom all also lost more money individually.”

“I think 31 players have withdrawn or retired from the Madrid Open so far across both draws, up from 21 on Friday. 17 women are now either withdrawn or retired in Madrid. Illness clusters mid tournament hit people like, Iga, Sam Sonnava, Maddie Keys. Coco Gauff's throwing up on court and still winning. Chillis was pulled out. So it's it's definitely a little bit all over the place, in terms of people feeling ill, but Coco did say she did not eat the tacos.”

“Sinner pumped the gas. He's on a heater right now. Oh, he's on a heater. And listen. I know that I talk a lot of shit about the long masters one thousands. If you have confidence in a bottle and you're like center and you know you're it's gonna be you know, you play one match, you get a day off, you play it's probably easier to commit to to Madrid and Rome in that scenario. He has 24 consecutive wins in Masters one thousand events, which is the fourth longest streak in history only behind Novak who did it with 31, then again did it with 30, and then Roger did it, and then now center.”

“So I was going to bring this up. From what I hear is like if you're a top if you're top five in the world or maybe like a top five seed, but you also have to be top five in the world too. I think you get a Porsche for playing and then if you win the tournament, you get a Porsche as well. So, I think there's been years where a player, a female player has been ranked like three in the world, gets a Porsche for playing and then wins the tournament and also gets a Porsche. So, you get two Porsches.”

“I guess the answer to your question is no. Like Francisco Roy, it will hopefully help out. Rafa spent an afternoon with her on the court. Like it was super fun. They hung out. That's in my opinion that's all it is. And it's not like EGA is going to be start hitting forehands like this and whipping it around. It's just like spending the afternoon around the aura of Rafa Nadal at his academy on Clay is just like good for the psyche.”

“If 7 months from a torn Achilles, I don't care if it was a partially torn. No one has ever done it. We're in a sport that you better use your legs and you better be full go 100% believe that you are going to be fine. This seems like a a bad idea from whoever's giving him this thought to go play Hamburg. Even if he takes the rest of the year off to get 100% healthy, he's not missing out on any.”

“I thought it was cool that maybe before the tournament they're interviewing Carlos and he acknowledged that he's going to lose the number one ranking at some point whether that was Monte Carlo at some point along the clay season. He knows basically he has too many points to defend. Sinner doesn't have any. That's kind that was like kind of cool. I thought I never remember like Rafer or Roger Novak like saying that.”

“But as good as these guys are and as dominant as they are, they still pale in comparison to Rafa Nadal on Clay. I mean, how many times did Rafa go Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Roland Garos? Just swept the clay court season. He did that 35 times in a row. It's a joke. It's a joke. No one can hold a candle to Rafa on this surface and no one will ever even come close.”

“I mean, I guess one thing we could say and it does look like this is not a tear. And, you know, you you hear wrist and tennis, and immediately, where does your mind go? To some really dark places. Juan Martin del Potro, Dominic Thiem, never the same player. On the other hand, no pun intended. I was thinking ten years ago, Novak's trying to win Roland Garros for the first time, and what happens? He's you know, is he gonna beat Rafa? And then Rafa has a wrist injury. And we all say, Rafa misses Wimbledon. And then by August, he's winning gold medals and doubles and is playing the US Open. So we hope that's what this is.”

“Is and I are in a little group chat and this is a quote from John from Jim Cer. I think Jim summed this up really well because of that wind. That wind affected Carlos's creativity more than it affected Sinner's uh consistency. That was from Jim Courier. I think that's like summed it up really well. Carlos, especially in the second set, just seemed like he was couldn't find the momentum.”

“I mean, speaking of number one, do these guys at the end of the day really care about being number one or they care about slam titles? Like, would you rather be number two and have more slam titles than Sinner? I think they care about year end number one. Yeah, they care about year end number. I think at this early in their career, I think maybe the year in number one doesn't really matter as much.”

“I had to live it. I had to live through the inconvenience of it. And for me, it created at least some sort of I always say proudly, whenever we have controversy, I can safely say that we have the most intense testing in all of sports. I love being able to say that. If I was getting woken up at 05:20 by a doorbell, and you have to provide your codes, if you have a gate to your house and the whole thing, if I was getting woken up, then that meant anyone else somewhere in the world was also having the threat of being tested, therefore, probably making the sport cleaner.”

“College tennis, in my opinion, outside looking in, I didn't play college tennis. I saw it. I watched it. I was around it nonstop growing up. My brother played four years at Georgia all the time. It's never been a better product. It is simply never been a higher quality of tennis to where, as a fan, if you get a chance to go to these matches, go. The number one player on a team that's top five in the country, sure as shit, like, they're gonna be in a major in the next eighteen months.”

“But at the masters 1000 events like the winners check has gone down. When I won Miami in 2018 I won more money for winning the title than uh center did this year in 2026. That's spread the prize money out. There's more total prize money, but the winner share was like $200,000 less in give or take in 2026 as it was in 2018. It's insane. It's absurd. No sport in the world has that going on right now.”

“Center right now is just on a tear. You said it. Three master series in a row. He's playing so consistent backhand to backhand. No one can go can stay can hang with him. Not even Carlos right now. And Carlos kind of admitted that. And it's so tough when center knows that at any moment I can just lock in on the backhand side, hit the ball crosscourt line, and no one can hang with me.”

“Speaking of Coachella, Stevie, you and I brought this up. If you buy a general admissions pass, you get in and then if you're like a Justin Bieber fan, you get in at noon and you run straight to the front. Do we think any of those people wore adult diapers? Because once you're in the front, you can't leave to go to the bathroom and get your way back to the front. For sure, Stevie. They're adult diapers at Coachella.”

“The demon win was his first career top 10 win, and then currently, he has 17 wins in his first 25 career ATP matches. That's silly. That's a better start than Nadal, Federer, Novak, Alcarez, Sinner, and Fonseca. We were talking about this on Tennis Channel. Courier gets the hat tip on this. Hodard's, like, top 20 in the rolling rankings. So this is a big week for him. He's from Madrid. He's playing Madrid. It's this real breakthrough tournament, but it's not like he came out of nowhere.”

“I remember this is, like, the the shady shit that my mom. She's like, if you ever have to vomit, if you ever like, a junior tennis, it's like, you know, you you're playing in, like, San Antonio where it's a thousand degrees and you happen to play 17 matches in a day as a junior. If you ever have to vomit, go in the middle of court. It's gonna take at least twenty minutes to clean it up. Your mom your mom said that? Yeah. My mom said that. It's next level.”