WATCH CLAY

“It is of the clay tournaments. It generally reads as the slowest. It's windy and it is slow. The ball is going to lose a ton of energy on the court surface. And the real sort of natural clay quarters, especially because there's less time for the less natural players to even make that adjustment and to get comfortable again on the dirt, the real natural clay quarters are usually going to do pretty well at this tournament.”

“The funny thing is this week, coincidentally, the ATP has launched its own fantasy tennis game. I was not a genius for the last three years thinking that this is something that should get done. Well, the ATP, they have made a move here. So for now, let's just do that. I have signed up. I have made a league. It's called Monday Match Analysis.”

“We discuss tennis’ place in the quickly changing landscape of Saudi investment in sport, with reports that the WTA Finals will not be renewing in Riyadh. Could Czechia or Poland be good hosts?”

“Munich is in some altitude, which is worth mentioning. Definitely increased the serve effectiveness on both ends. But Kaboli with a, real string of missed first serves at five o. He missed, four first serves in a row.”

“I promise I'm not being paid by Alejandro Tabilo. I'm not in his payroll. But for, I cannot believe this, but it's three straight tournaments. He has been my dark horse. Indian Wells, where I don't think he made me look smart. Miami, where he did make me look somewhat smart. He got a couple of wins over Komasanya and Rublev before losing a tight one.”

“And on clay, I do think the indoor clay is a good surface for a little bit of time on the ball and so dominant on both serve and return. This time she just resorted back to the brilliant form that she'd been in all season. I think Andreeva and Muchova were not quite either of them at their sort of physical best in the semifinal or final, they both perhaps faded a little bit, but Rybakina was just awesome.”

“I had a pierced ear. I think 13. There has to be photos. I was playing a lot of basketball. The refs wouldn't allow me to play the basketball game with my... I had a hoop. I think what I did was I faked a note from my parents that it was okay or something like that, and they fell for it.”

“I thought it was cool that maybe before the tournament, they're interviewing Carlos, and he acknowledged that he's going to lose the Narayan 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.”

“Today it was not the regular altitude type of game that he enjoys... he actually kind of just needed to outgrind Rafa Nadal.”

“Because of that wind, it that wind affected Carlos's creativity more than it affected Sinner's, 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 or, like, that that one miracle shot.”

“I think maybe the more significant point is they feel more like the Sinner Alcaraz. Rather than worrying about who's number one, who's number two, they feel different to everybody else right now. I think that they should be going into probably, and certainly the next Grand Slam as the favorites really, because it's Clay, and I was looking at Rybakina's Roland Garros record, hasn't been that great.”

“Shelton's heavily spun forehand cross court was an ace up the sleeve for him. It was the most impactful ground stroke on the court to my eyes throughout the match because Kaboli's backhand contact points ended up being nightmarish. Absolutely nightmarish. Because of the way that ball was jumping up on him.”

“If you have a lingering knee issue, you take the time during the parts of the year where you're probably going to be the least successful. Like, is it smart to play through it, Indian Wells and Miami? Yeah, probably your likelihood of playing through that there and getting a result, it didn't work out for him because there's no script in tennis. But yeah, I mean, if I had something bothering me, I was more likely to try to heal it during the part of the season that was the biggest struggle for me.”

“I want to pick from the section with Tiafoe and Bublik because as far as which unseated player is most likely to make a deep run, it's going to probably be out of that section. And then you have a very close on-paper matchup against Martan Fucovic, who actually beat Tabilo in Bucharest in 2024. But I just feel like Fucovic will have a lot of trouble hunting forehands against Tabilo's lefty precision. And I like the way Tabilo is playing overall. And to me, he's just easily the most dangerous unseated player in that particular section.”

“I want to talk about his serve though. You cannot properly credit Ben Shelton's serve for how good it is without talking about his second, which I believe has become the best second serve in all of men's tennis. He is the leader right now in 2026 on second serve win rate. In order, it's Shelton, Fiese, Sinner, Alcaraz, Zverev. That's the top five.”

“If you take no rest, no rest, you've got six days of prep on a surface you haven't played on in six 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 gotta be cut from a a different cloth to manage that, and he becomes the first to do it successfully since Novak Djokovic in 2015.”

“Clay is rare. It's not the default service in the States. Like warmer climates, there's more clay, right? You go to Florida and there's way more clay. But I always heard that, I was like, we have to do something to make our players better on clay all the time. You know, we need to play year round on clay. I'm like, I don't know, there's three Grand Slams on hardened grass. Like, are we going to commit time and resources to, like, addressing the worst of it and still have to go through RAFA? That doesn't seem smart.”

“I have not heard from them. So this is where my information on what's going on is very limited. I don't know what happened, but I think it's safe to assume Bulkie is not going to be a thing. I hope everyone's okay over there. More likely than not, they probably just axed the project and they haven't been communicative with me. So Bulkie's gone.”

“I know that there's gaps between matches, but we've heard players talk about the fact that those two week masters are grueling because you're on, you're in tournament mode for such a long period of time. And I just don't think it's feasible really to expect him to play every single clay court event.”

“If you take green clay and rub it between your fingers, it'll probably feel a little bit more like salt, like where it's kind of hard and firm. If you go to like Roland Garros, it's almost like powder, like it's like baking powder. Like they all are a little bit different. I like the thick clay because I wasn't a native mover. I feel like I could commit a little bit more. Whereas like, you know, the European clay can really like expose movement because you have to be so precise and light and like flow.”

“Returning to number one in the race, David is an interesting one for Rybakina, isn't it? Because absolutely nobody is arguing with Irina Sabalenka being the world number one, the best tennis player in the world. And yet, with quite a large sample size now, coming up to four months, Elena Rybakina has been the best player in the world in 2026, and I think somehow those two things are both true.”

“Sinner takes him out seven six six three. He has been completely dominant since Doha, inning wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, three straight 1,000 titles. Backhand to backhand, no one can go can stay can hang with him. Not even Carlos right now. And Carlos kind of admitted that.”

“If you look at how many forehands Alcaraz hit, the number is, 98 versus a 112 backhands. That's amazing. It's really hard to get Carlos to hit that many more backhands compared to forehands. Sinner, on the other hand, hit a 117 forehands to just 80 backhands. The only way that that's possible is that you're playing a lot of points if you're Yannick Sinner getting to hit your forehand into Alcaraz's backhand.”

“I'm not surprised. Because this is what he has done throughout his so far relatively young career. He's had some results that sort of make you scratch your head now that he's a bonafide, like, top ten player. Indian Wells, I know he was sick there. Miami's a head scratcher, right? Losing to Shevchenko in his first match.”

“I mean, this really wasn't any spectacular tennis from either player, but it was a gritty contest.”

“It appears that some rivalries may not ever leave the court, they just move into the boardroom. Now Andy's selling sneakers made of castor beans, corn and seaweed, meanwhile, Roddick's sitting on a 3% stake of On Running, a company valued at nearly $20 billion. His stake alone is worth around $375 million.”

“I think maybe the more significant point is they feel more like the Sinner Alcaraz. Rather than worrying about who's number one, who's number two, they feel different to everybody else right now. I think that they should be going into probably, and certainly the next Grand Slam as the favorites really, because it's Clay, and I was looking at Rybakina's Roland Garros record, hasn't been that great.”

“It is of the clay tournaments. It generally reads as the slowest. It's windy and it is slow. The ball is going to lose a ton of energy on the court surface. And the real sort of natural clay quarters, especially because there's less time for the less natural players to even make that adjustment and to get comfortable again on the dirt, the real natural clay quarters are usually going to do pretty well.”

“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 gonna utilize that time to make forehands and then play on the rise at shoulder level. That was sort of the positioning that Sinner was typically looking for when Carlos played the high ball. I saw him getting around a lot of forehands and flattening it out inside out.”

“I said first title, someone we think is finally going to break through and win their first ATP title, I said Jaume Munar. Turns out he hasn't played since Rotterdam. He was playing well, and he's the guy that plays a lot of tournaments, clearly hurt. He's a 26 to 28 tournament a year guy, dealing with some health issues right now.”

“The funny thing is this week, coincidentally, the ATP has launched its own fantasy tennis game. I was not a genius for the last three years thinking that this is something that should get done. And I've even reached out to other podcasts and I've been like, hey, can we do this together? Well, the ATP, they have made a move here. So for now, let's just do that. I have signed up. I have made a league. It's called Monday Match Analysis.”

“He said, it's a more serious injury than we all expected. And I have to listen to my body so it doesn't affect me in the future. With great sadness, I have to return home and recover as quickly as possible.”

“I mean, that serve translates anywhere. Potato patch, like when you can serve 140 and then kick it over someone's head both ways. That tends to work. His ball flight on his forehand naturally has a lot of spin on it. You know, I think as the surfaces have become kind of more mono-surface, I think the entire thing is like, can Ben beat me today with his backhand? Which is tough because there's only so many people that can neutralize the serve.”

“I also want to say before we go quarter by quarter, this is a pretty significantly weakened field based on just withdrawal. So I'm going to go down the list right now. It's Djokovic, Fritz, Draper, Davidovic, Vakina, Feis, Munnar, Korda. And then a few Americans didn't sign up. Shelton, Tommy, Paul, a couple others. So, there are plenty of players who you would normally expect to see in a Masters 1000 tournament that we will not be seeing.”

“How does Klay hide Shelton's weaknesses? First off, it's easier for him to return serve. He's easily rushable on the return. He's worked very hard on abbreviated technique in order to improve on the return. But based on his numbers coming into this Munich final, that remains a real work in progress and a bona fide weakness in Shelton's game, his ability to return effectively.”

“Arthur Fils. Big event. Amanda is back, takes out Rublev in the final 6-2, 7-6. Stevie J, let me go to you. Second Frenchman to win Barcelona since his old French guy in 85, 41-year drought. Fils lit it up, though. The guy is back.”

“For first title, I had Ethan Quinn. He won that challenger that's like an ATP event. I know it doesn't count as a title, but my God, is it close? There's not a tougher challenger all year. He beat Shevshenko first round, like sixth and the third, who beat Ben Shelton in Miami.”

“Iga's dropped to number four in the world, hasn't reached a final this season. Her game is the Spanish school, heavy top spin, extreme RPMs, grinding opponents behind the baseline. Royce has literally built his career coaching that style. The first tournament together for the duo, Stuttgart April 13th, clay season officially is on.”

“I saw his interview on ESPN. Thought it was fantastic. Golf, tennis, so much crossover. ESPN did a great job, getting Rafa on there. Must have been weird for him to be at the masters while Monte Carlo was going on. He won that tournament, what, 10 times in a row?”

“Monte Carlo kicks off this weekend. Quick reminder, it's the only non-mandatory Masters 1000 and the withdrawal list reflects that. Five big names out, Novak Djokovic with a right shoulder, Taylor Fritz healing some tendonitis, Jack Draper still managing an arm injury, and 2025 semifinalist Davidovic Fekina is out with an abdominal tear.”

“I also want to say before we go quarter by quarter, this is a pretty significantly weakened field based on just withdrawal. So I'm going to go down the list right now. It's Djokovic, Fritz, Draper, Davidovic, Vakina, Feis, Munnar, Korda. And then a few Americans didn't sign up. Shelton, Tommy, Paul, a couple others. So, there are plenty of players who you would normally expect to see.”

“You have to pick someone who didn't win a Masters 1000. Exactly. Who are you going to pick other than Carlos and Yannick at this point? No, no, no. Everyone's going to look silly. Of course. But as we'll get to in the future, Sam made a great prediction that almost came true.”

“Returning to number one in the race, David is an interesting one for Rybakina, isn't it? Because absolutely nobody is arguing with Irina Sabalenka being the world number one, the best tennis player in the world. And yet, with quite a large sample size now, coming up to four months, Elena Rybakina has been the best player in the world in 2026, and I think somehow those two things are both true.”

“Arthur Fils's first title since coming back from injury in Barcelona and discuss why he's a legitimate threat to Sinner and Alcaraz. Finally, the first installment of the French Open Power Rankings.”

“And then basically midway through Indian Wells, the app stopped working and I have not heard from them. So this is where my information on what's going on is very limited. I don't know what happened, but I think it's safe to assume Bulkie is not going to be a thing. I hope everyone's okay over there. More likely than not, they probably just axed the project and they haven't been communicative with me.”

“I was very unaware that there was potentially I had a membership. I've reached out. I'm in fact a member. I've already had someone this morning actually asked me to play the mixed doubles championships. There's a members party during the Queens Club that I'm not going to make. Unbelievable. I am in fact a member at Queens.”

“Reports broke this week that the WTA finals are potentially leaving Saudi Arabia after this season. The three-year deal with Riyadh is done, and the front runner to host starting in 2027, Charlotte, North Carolina, serves hometown in just a few hours drive north here of Charleston.”

“I love answering questions about the French Open. We haven't played a tournament on clay yet. It's my favorite. Zverev. I mean, he's been in the final. He's won master series on it. Like you go back and you recreate his career and you take out those names you just said, and he's looking at five or six slams.”

“I trust her more, I trust her body more in these matches and these tournaments. She's 20 and this season against everyone that isn't Sabalenka, Goff, Swiatek and Rybakina. She is not taking bad losses at all, you know, and she's healthy, she's played a full schedule, but she's also, to David's point about Sabalenka, I think, playing a smart schedule. She's pulling out of events, you know, looking through the season.”

“I suspect that this will be the first of very many night sessions in Barcelona because I suspect they're making a lot of money from it. And, you know, once you're making money from something, that genie doesn't go back in the bottle. It tends to sort of mate with other genies.”

“She'd lost six times in a row to Goff. And she'd actually lost three times in a row to Svitolina. So to flip those head to heads around in consecutive matches, I agree with you, this does feel like a real step for Muchova. Her forehand picked up where it left off against Mertens in the round before and was absolutely brilliant coming up with so many angles, such pace on it as well.”

“And on clay, I do think the indoor clay is a good surface for a little bit of time on the ball and so dominant on both serve and return. This time she just resorted back to the brilliant form that she'd been in all season. I think Andreeva and Muchova were not quite either of them at their sort of physical best in the semifinal or final, they both perhaps faded a little bit, but Rybakina was just awesome.”

“Jack is gonna be stepping away. Of course, he's our guy. We're gonna try to bring him on from time to time, but his schedule, has just proven to be too difficult, to, to show up each and every time. And we discussed it, and that's that. But, you know, we love Jack.”

“He's won ten sets in a row now, going back to his previous tournament and his first couple of matches here, without losing more than three games in a set. He has been destroying people, including Munnar, Karabelli a couple of times, Muller, Trangeli, Mahatch.”

“I think he's a top five guy. If he's healthy, the way he's played, the way he has proven to play in the past as well. You know, but it just scares you a little bit because of the back injury, right? He's just so young to have a back injury. So hopefully that's just a one off and he's good because again, like tennis is better when these young superstar guys like electric, great charisma on the court are out there playing.”

“I trust her more, I trust her body more in these matches and these tournaments. She's 20 and this season against everyone that isn't Sabalenka, Goff, Swiatek and Rybakina. She is not taking bad losses at all, you know, and she's healthy, she's played a full schedule, but she's also, to David's point about Sabalenka, I think, playing a smart schedule. She's pulling out of events, you know, looking through the season.”

“She'd lost six times in a row to Goff. And she'd actually lost three times in a row to Svitolina. So to flip those head to heads around in consecutive matches, I agree with you, this does feel like a real step for Muchova. Her forehand picked up where it left off against Mertens in the round before and was absolutely brilliant coming up with so many angles, such pace on it as well.”

“For me, I said there's going to be a slam winner who isn't Sinner or Alcaraz. I have three slams left. We'll see. I said there will be a new American slam champion on the WTA side. I still like that to happen. I do.”

“If I’m putting on my coach's hat and I see Sinner at 50 unforced errors, which is of course really high in a two set match, I'm saying that's okay. Jannik has to play attacking tennis. He needs to get on Alcaraz and be on his front foot and and take charge with big aggressive ground strokes. We saw what happened, I think, when he played a safer style against Carlos throughout 2024. It just did not work.”

“Loses in the quarterfinals of Houston as the number one seed. So he's not going into Munich with a lot of confidence or a lot like, like a lot of match wins recently. But he's done this in the past. Like, he doesn't necessarily need that. And all of a sudden he can pop these big results.”

“Yannick Sinner is Monte Carlo champion 2026. His first big clay court title, his fourth straight 1,000 title, slowly but surely, chipping away at that Carlos Alcaraz head to head, having won three out of the last five. And he becomes number one in the world. I think both players, Alcaraz and Sinner, have made it clear that that is a footnote in their heads, and I think it should be a footnote in our heads as well.”

“It's funny he's playing at night, by the way, because like that's literally the tournament organizers saying, we gotta give him literally every minute possible.”

“Lopez said of the actions by Alcaraz that it shouldn't be normalized, but it is not surprising for a 22-year-old. He said that Carlos needs to control those impulses, especially in front of the opponent. You don't want to show those weaknesses to the other side of the net, but that beyond that, that's just how Carlos releases tension.”