And Just Like That...

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO 
Swiatek keeps head high, Draper struggles

Iga Swiatek is facing all the doping questions as she comes back to competition at the United Cup, and she, for now, seems to have a firm hand on it all. A change of coach, a change of communication team, a change of number in the ranking, a change of media coverage: it’s a lot of changes for someone who’s a well-known routine master. But Swiatek is holding the fort, not shying away from the scrutiny.

She acknowledged she was anxious about how people would look at her now, cut herself from the internet, yet was relieved to receive support from her country. "After the information about my case was released, I was scared that most of the people are going to turn their back on me. But I felt the support, and it's great. Obviously there are going to be some negative comments and you're not going to avoid that. I just have to accept that, and I don't really care about those, honestly,” she said in Sydney.

As the Polish agency declined to appeal the decision made in Swiatek’s case, the last trouble for the player could come from an appeal from WADA. It’s what happened to Jannik Sinner, but Iga Swiatek doesn’t think she’ll face the same hurdle. “Swiatek doesn’t “think there is any reason” for an appeal, adding that she has “no influence on what’s going to happen,” reports The Athletic. What else did we learn from Swiatek in her first week of the new season? That she found out she had Covid-19 when she played in Dubai last year.

If you’d ask me which ATP player I have on my “Gonna Make Some Damage” list for 2025, I’ll tell you Jack Draper. So, of course, because I tend to be a jinx, Draper’s start of the year seems to be in a rough spot due to a hip injury. The British player had already given up in the off-season on a training block with Carlos Alcaraz, then had to withdraw from the United Cup, and is now said to be in a race against time to be fit for the Australian Open.

“For me, at this stage of my career, what’s most important is that I can have a long career. There’s many young athletes who I’ve seen over the years, and I’ve heard stories about, who have these little niggles at a younger age. They don’t do much about it, they don’t explore it, and then it becomes a big problem when they get older. If they’d have managed that area better – a specific area, like the hip, like a knee or an ankle – then it would have saved a lot of time off [for] a lot of different things. So that’s where I’m at right now,” he told the Guardian. Draper also told The Times that the reason why he was sick on the court during his semi-final at the US Open was the amount of painkillers he took through the event to manage an ankle injury.

Talking about ambitious British players for 2025, it seems Emma Raducanu has already made her vows to be fitter and manage her activities better for 2025 even before the 31st of December.

Finally, have you ever thought about what happens to tennis material when it’s discarded? The Conversation has a feature about the amount of high-tech waste produced by sport and how to recycle it. “In the United Kingdom, for instance, about 90% of all composite waste goes to landfill. Only 2% is reused for carbon fibre. (…) Globally, about 7,000 tonnes of composite sporting equipment reaches its end of life and could be recycled every year. Demand for recycling is increasing. This stream of waste now accounts for almost 9% of the total composite market.”

UNITED CUP 
Rybakina: What Do We Expect?

Elena Rybakina is going to be one of the biggest mysteries at the top of the game for the Australian Open. Can she already be back to her best? Is her association with Goran Ivanisevic already efficient? And more generally, is she okay? So it’s been nice to see her play well to launch her season at the United Cup as Kazakhstan beat Greece to clinch a spot in the quarterfinals. Rybakina also looked happy to be out there, so for now, it’s boding well.

I will admit that it has demanded a lot of convincing for my brain to get back into tennis 2025, even before the year 2024 has come to an end. It feels very weird to watch players do their things in the middle of the holiday season. I still feel that the winter break has turned into a joke, and I still fear more and more bodies will pay the price for it. I love Australia and its summer of tennis (I loved the Hopman Cup in Perth!!), but when the last season has barely ended, it’s honestly giving “let’s all try to get a burnout!”.

Also, many might feel that way because we’ve spent the short off-season deep into doping scandals. Where was our break?? Side note for tennis: you’re gonna have to get your sh.. together for 2025 because you used all your “benefit of the doubt” cards already. Stop trying to make pickleball happen on your lawn, please.

QUESTION OF THE DAY 
Are you watching?

You were 80% to think Iga Swiatek’s case had been handled fairly.

“Case was handled rapidly and scientifically. I actually think it shouldn't have even gotten as far as it did. Given the amount of TMZ in her body and the date of the last test it was impossible she could have been doping. It shouldn't have been a 'fail' and the player should have only been told about the presence of it to allow them to be more careful in the future,” said Andrew. “Overall, yes. But they need to change the procedure for announcing a ban. Iga was put into the untenable situation of having to lie about why she was not playing in some tourneys. Announcing the ban earlier would have been much better,” commented Shirley, while Margaret said, “Personally speaking, I am not a fan of these 'silent bans'. It just adds more suspicion, full stop.”

BUSINESS / MEDIA 
Women’s sports get bars and angels

Will you be able to watch the next Wimbledon women’s final at The Bra? Who knows! CNN has a profile of Jenny Nguyen, who, in 2022, opened The Sports Bra: a bar that only airs women’s sports. Why? She had enough of having to watch the NCAA women's basketball matches with no sound in the bar she was going to. Why no sound? Because all the screens with sound were for men’s sports.

She said F. This, and here she is now, with $1 million made in sales in eight months and the first-ever women’s sports only bar in the world. The Sports Bra will soon be a national franchise, and it’s another proof of the momentum that women’s sports are having. “So many folks who come into the Bra, they will tell me that it never occurred to them that this was needed,” Nguyen said. “When guys come in here, they say things like, ‘Wow, it never occurred to me that when I walk into a sports bar, it’s always men’s sports.’” Oh, and guess who the investor in the soon-to-be franchise is? Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit co-founder and Serena Williams’ husband.

Talking about the rise of women’s sports, it’s also happening in the venture capital world, as Worth Magazine illustrates with a feature about Lorine Pendleton, founder of 125 Ventures. Pendleton encourages women angel investors to invest in underrepresented founders. “125 Ventures is investing in sports, focusing on women’s sports, media, and entertainment at the intersection of tech. Women’s sports are projected to grow 300% by 2030, yet only 1% of investment goes there. We’re seeing major viewership growth—300% during the Olympics, largely thanks to U.S. women athletes. Events like gymnastics, soccer, and basketball drew huge audiences,” Pendleton said.

YouTube and CAA tackle AI Deepfakes

This is the world we live in, so it’s time to get organized. Athletes represented by CAA will now be able to join forces with YouTube in order to find and take down AI Deppefakes of themselves. “Under the partnership, CAA clients, “many of whom have been impacted by recent AI innovations,” will have access to YouTube’s early-stage likeness management technology, which is designed to identify and manage AI-generated content featuring faces on YouTube “at scale,” according to the companies,” reports Variety.

SOME BREAK POINTS… 
Osaka won’t hang around tennis if she doesn’t start winning again

Naomi Osaka loves to win way more than she loves the game. It’s never been a secret. The Japanese, who has struggled her whole career with keeping the motivation and fire from the start to the end of a season, has again been honest about it all. She came back in 2024 and didn’t get the results she was expecting, and so for 2025, she’s already warning that the stakes will be high. "I don't think I'm the type of player that would hang around," Osaka told reporters. "I have a lot of respect for all the players on tour, but the point of my life that I'm at right now, if I'm not above a certain ranking, I don't see myself playing for a while. I'd rather spend time with my daughter if I'm not where I think I should be and where I feel like I can be."

Osaka doesn’t play tennis just because she loves it: she plays tennis to be the best and win big. "I think 2024 humbled me, but I also feel like I grew a lot. I worked way harder than I've ever worked before. So I guess it was very painful to not get the results I wanted, but I feel like I'm growing and learning and I am really excited for this year [2025]. I played really good matches. People still talk to me about my match at the French Open [lost 7-6, 1-6, 7-5 against Iga Swiatek]. So, I'm glad that I was able to give people memories as well.”

It’s either she’s the boss, or she gets out of here. She’s not the first player who has said this through the years, and many times, you’d still find these players on Tour a decade later, still chasing the biggest trophies, still unable to close the chapter because what if… Yet, when it comes to Naomi Osaka, I tend to fully believe that she’ll prefer to walk away and turn into a businesswoman or a Hollywood fixture than keep playing tennis as a regular player. If she can’t be a tennis star anymore, Osaka will find another path to be one in something else. Her new coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, has some experience with a top female player who was in it only to win, win, win…

Masarova gets back with her ex

You would think the sun would always win! And you’d also think people knew it was rarely a good idea to get back with an ex. Yet, seven years after leaving Swiss Tennis for the Spanish federation, Rebeka Masarova ditched Spain and returned to her native country. Masarova, who lives in Barcelona, was born and raised in Switzerland (Basel) with a dad from Slovakia and a mother from Spain. Masarova, a finalist in Auckland in 2023, is ranked #145. The unusual situation of a player with three passports!

PLAY HARD, TRAIN HARD, DRESS THE PART 
Is 2025 going to bring Tennis Fashion back? #Please

You all know by now how much I found 2024 Fashion boring. If you take out Naomi Osaka’s US Open outfits, nothing happened. Nothing except bad taste (Alcaraz’s outfit at Roland-Garros, please again tell me why?!). So, do we think 2025 is going to be the redeem team for tennis brands? I’m crossing fingers and toes.

EDITOR’S PICKS 

You can find other picks here, including my go-to newsletters for anything tech*, anything backstage* or professional sports*, and the one for everything NIL*. If you’re a solopreneur, you might like this one, by the way. I also have a sweet spot for The Creator Spotlight*, which provides examples of other creators’ journeys. If you are a collector of anything sports-related, look at Above the Mantel. And if you’re a woman looking for better coverage of our lives, issues, and interests, I suggest you, Gloria.

WATCH: Novak Djokovic is discovering that being coached by one of your greatest rivals isn’t as easy as he might have thought. “It’s strange to share secrets…”. Watch Djokovic talking about it here.

READ: Rafael Nadal was in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) for the ATP Next Gen Finals due to his role as ambassador for the Saudi federation. He talked about it and also about his new life away from the competition to Reem Abulleil for The National.

READ More: A former professional tennis player is now a writing sensation in the UK. Conor Niland won the Sports Book of the Year for his autobiography The Racket - On Tour with Tennis’s Golden Generation and the other 99%. He talked about it all to the Guardian.

LISTEN TO: On January 6th, Caroline Garcia’s podcast will come back for a second season and will have Iga Swiatek as the first guest. If you want to have a chance to listen to it earlier, you can try your luck here.