BACK SINNER

“Carlos likes to use height on this surface to attack Yannik Center. He especially gets rewarded and this is the way in which he likes to kind of initially build the points. Often get the ball up high into center's backhand. But Sinner was not really allowing Carlos to play that high ball into the backhand because he was so proactive in taking the slower ball into his backhand and making sure I'm going to utilize that time to make forehands and then play on the rise at shoulder level.”

“I kind of do mind the 50 unforced errors from Alcarez because Carlos has the option to just play like a backboard, to trust your legs to keep you in points, to attack patiently and selectively to make sure that you're not overplaying in conditions where it's going to be really difficult to feel the ball and time the ball. Carlos played this way in the Australian Open final against an attacking player in much faster conditions and the roof was closed. They were indoors. So in much more offense friendly conditions, Alcar showed on that occasion, I'm willing to actually win this match with my legs.”

“I've got center over Felix in straits in the final and a fifth straight Masters 1000 for Yannik Center. As long as his body holds up and he serves decently well, the serve is going to be a key for him. I still don't see anybody taking him out, particularly not in this weekend field.”

“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.”

“And Koma has the second spinniest forehand on tour. uh via you know just solely based on RPM average. He's literally second after feast in RPM. Plays with a lot of shape and just a ton of spin on the forehand. He's going to get great jump off the court.”

“I want to play this clip of Blair Henley interviewing Learner Tienne in Houston. It is hilarious. Blair is the goat, by the way. And uh I think it is going to tell you a lot. Do you feel like the clay is growing on you at all? Yeah. A real convincing learner. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I mean, it's it's getting there.”

“We know the lore. We know the deal with wrist injuries. They seem to have at times more long-term more like long-term permanent effects compared to some other body parts. If you have a knee injury or something like that, normally we're not talking about it as like a turning point in people's careers, but unfortunately for a guy like Delotro or for a guy like Dominic Team, you have wrist surgery and you come back and you're never the same.”

“You win the Sunshine double. You fly back to Europe. Maybe a Sunday evening redeye, but far more likely to be a Monday morning flight, I would think, or a Monday flight. At any rate, if you take no rest, no rest, you've got six days of prep on a surface you haven't played on in 6 months, and then you have to play five matches in six days in a condensed format, very high level competition pretty much every round. That's tough. You've got to be cut from a a different cloth to manage that. And he becomes the first to do it successfully since NovakJokovic in 2015.”

“interesting that Konita Martinez was not was not in Lintz. Not for any breakup reasons. Um Andrea was asked about it and said, you know, she said a joke. She said, "Oh, we've just been getting on each other's nerves so much. We needed a break from each other." But then she was like, "No, I just told her she needs to have a week off. She needs to go home sometimes and this is a good week. I'm going to go to Lintz anyway and she'll rejoin me."”

“Alcarz hits a well-located forehand inside out. center tracks it down in his deep backhand corner. Carlos is in a great position here. He runs around for a forehand and he opts for a drop shot inside out. Theoretically, he's trying to hit this behind Yannik Center. He tried to go behind sinner, but actually behind sinner didn't exist. There was no behind sinner because he hadn't yet gotten into the court enough yet. So essentially what I mean is the whole court was in front of sinner. There was no behind.”

“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.”

“much like last year's French Open final um the interview that Alcarez uh gave after one of his earlier sort of quarterfinal win maybe or perhaps a round of 16 when he was asked about this narrative that you know the like the likes of us have been building massively about Yanix hunting down the world number one and um Alcare said oh I'm going to lose it like you know he talked about it like he had accepted He was resigned to it. Didn't seem that bothered.”

“Should we talk about Valentine Vashiro for a moment? No, I don't think he's killed them off because he hasn't actually done a full circuit at this level yet. I mean, I'm quite interested to see what circuit two looks like, you know, ne this time next year. I'll be curious to see where he is. But I listen, I think he's better than certainly some people do. I think he's a good I think he's got game and I think he's got swagger.”

“Felix, I know, has been quiet of late, but he is a former finalist here. I I struggle to fully credit him for that run. It is indeed the luckiest run to a Masters 1000 final I have ever witnessed. Basically, everybody got injured in front of him.”

“I always think the the the only real sort of women's clay court event that feels like a proper precursor to Row and Garos is Rome because you've got Lints and Stokart indoors. You've got Madrid which okay the men have as well but that never feels particularly feels indoors it yeah it's an altitude like it's just a very particular set of conditions whereas the men have Monte Cara they have Barcelona which which really do feel like those really authentic European outdoor clay court events I I would love the WTA to you know mirror the men's clay court swing more”

“I think it's a pretty big breakthrough in that sense as well to beat Alcarez and Monte Carlo because this is this is pretty much the slowest conditions on tour. These are the slowest conditions on tour. the head-to-head in slow conditions by my count was uh 6-2 Alcarez, but five in a row to Carlos. I think Yannik will take a lot of pride in beating Carlos in these conditions which are about as slow as it gets. That's significant.”

“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.”

“It may not have been pretty, but I bet you that what Center's team will be telling him, and maybe Yanuk doesn't even need to be told this, he should be extra proud to scrap out a win against Carlos Alcarez while playing less than his best tennis on Alcarz's favorite surface. That should be a point of pride for Yannik Center and for Carlos. Plenty of improvements to attempt to make moving forward.”

“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 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.”

“the gap between those two, it it feels almost and the rest, I mean, it feels almost embarrassing for the rest. I know it reflects more on them being utterly unreal than than everybody else. The drop back to Zerv is in third is 5,555. And like we all saw SA against Verv on uh on Saturday. The gap feels that big if not bigger.”

“And that was after Bianca Andrescu spent more than five hours on court over the course of two losses in one day. you might have seen the the clip during the rounds on on social media of what happened on her match point on the match point against her in her singles match against Julia Putin Saver which went to a deciding set tie break. she shanked a second serve to double fault at 46 down in the deciding set tie break. and I just I just hope she has good people around her, Bianca Andrescu, because my goodness me, I I I can't imagine the the despair of uh of something like that.”

“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.”

“he's from Madrid, to be clear. So he's not just Spanish. He's from Madrid. That means he grew up though. He trains in the altitude. He is not going to be like he'll know exactly what to expect. It's not going to feel foreign to him and yeah, you've really got to like his chances.”

“I think if I were to boil it down, I want great servers and I want huge spin if I can get it. Big forehands, huge spin. And that that's pretty that was pretty well represented last year with Casper beating Jack Draper in the final. two really good serve plus one players and two high RPM forehands.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In terms of the final and the the sinaras of it all, Matt, is this one of those results where the win for Yanick Ser is more consequential than the loss for Carlos Alcarez? Yeah, I think that's probably quite a good way of putting it, I would say. He has said Roland Garos is his biggest goal and trying to complete that career slam. I think it's massive for the confidence. You know, I just think if he' taken a loss here, it might have dented that a little bit. But now he's got the world number one back. He's got a win over Carlos Alcarez.”

“extraordinarily Great Britain went away. And I I was with Anki Oathong pretty much immediately after the uh the draw came out for these Billy Jeene King Cup qualifiers and her face when she found out that it was an away tie in Australia. Like it's just a nightmare, isn't it, for a for a captain and a nightmare because you know you're not going to be able to get your strongest team and she didn't get a strongest team. No Katy Bolter, no Emma Adakano, no problem for GB. They beat Australia 3 and 0 to qualify for the Billy Jeene King Cup finals.”

“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.”

“Medvidev versus Ethan Quinn in round two. I think Quinn will really like the altitude. He's got a big serve. He's got a cannon off the forehand. This will be a throwback match. This is going to be someone who just looks at Denil Medvidev and says, If you're going to do that, then I'm just going to be a serve and volier. Call me Pat Rafter. Call me Taylor Dent. Call me Michael Yodra. I'm a serve volier now.”

“S's first serve percentage would be the worst it's been since the US Open. in this stretch of time where S has made 67% of his first serves over um I'll give you the number of matches over 47 matches he's made an average of 67% he had his worst performance of those 47 matches today in Monte Carlo against the only real peer he has on tour and he still won in straight sets. By the way, quick note, can you guess what the second worst percentage serve performance was for Yannik? That would be the ATP finals against Carlos Alcarez. So, the two times he's played Carlos, those have been his two lowest first serve percentage matches.”

“by the way, just to go back to the match, you know, we haven't we haven't talked about the wind. if you told me going into it, it's going to be a windy final. I would have thought that that would favor Alcaratz actually. And I know he's the one who's given the quote before about the windy and not liking it, but I just think his game, his natural game with his movement, with his spins, with his changes of heights and all that sort of thing to me is more set up to play in the wind than Yanick S. So I was so impressed. It was actually SA who got a handle on those conditions I think the best.”