‘Tis The Clay Season (again)

CLAY SEASON
‘Tis The Clay Season (again)

The dirt is back. Sorry, socks. As usual, when spring tries to take over, the tennis Tour turns to the clay swing. Of course, some clay appetizers already happened in South America in February, because some people will never have enough clay to slide on. But April launches THE clay season, the one that leads to the second Grand Slam event of the year, Roland-Garros. Also in 2024, it will be clay-galore as the Olympics will be played on the red of Roland-Garros.

This week is already seeing the launch of the first part of the swing with tournaments in Estoril, Charleston, Marrakech, Bogota, and Houston. The Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters will be the first Masters 1000 on clay of the year :

• This year, it comes with a “will he or won’t he” question as Rafael Nadal is still giving no hints as to what his clay schedule will look like. Is the master of the clay going to be able to get his feet on it despite an injury that is, unfortunately, hurting his potential last year on Tour? It’s been reported that he might have hurt himself again during his Netflix match against Carlos Alcaraz, and some are already guessing he’d miss most of the clay season. We’re all waiting for Rafa to either raise or dash our hopes to see him again on a tennis court.
  

• Some players will be under more pressure than others in Monte-Carlo. Novak Djokovic might feel he needs to show the pack who is still the wolf in chief. Holger Rune is starting a stretch of defending a lot of points as he played the finals in Monte-Carlo and Rome last year. Andrey Rublev defends the title and it’s never easy to cope with that. Also, Stefanos Tsitsipas is landing on his favorite surface and surely needs to use it to get back on his (high) track.

All eyes on Iga Swiatek. She’s the queen of that clay and she intends on keeping that crown. Swiatek should start her 2024 campaign in Stuttgart for the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix: she won there in 2022 and 2023, she’s an ambassador for Porsche and surely she’d love winning a third car in a row (or a lucky person in her entourage might love the idea too!).

With three titles at Roland-Garros, the World No. 1 will again be the player to watch and to beat on clay in 2024. She’s been dealing with the pressure extremely well as far as Roland-Garros is concerned for now, so let’s see if she will extend her realm a bit more. She is still way ahead of her rivals again on that surface but her losses in Melbourne and Miami may have given a bit more belief to the field. I’m also curious to see if Ons Jabeur can make a comeback after a rough start of the year. If that knee could just leave her alone… Both the WTA and ATP clay schedules can be found here and there.

DOUBLES
The ATP is shaking things up in doubles

The debate about the future of doubles has been ongoing for years already, but it picked up after the Australian Open when the AO boss, Craig Tiley, delivered a rather grim observation of the state of things. “I think we may have lost our way a little bit, we’re not meaning enough”, he said. For context, the Tour has also been doing a review of the doubles in order to implement changes.

Jamie Murray, one of the big names of doubles, didn’t mince his words in Doha during our discussion about the matter. He gave many suggestions to help the situation and claimed the Tour just didn’t care enough about the product and wasn’t listening to the players. “It’s giving it no chance to thrive”, he said. He overall shared the worries expressed by Tiley.

And so here we are in April, and the ATP is making a (doubles) move. They will use the Madrid Masters 1000 (April 22 - May 5) to test some new rules to give doubles a fresh face destined to seduce more people (and surely more TV people). The goal is also to facilitate the scheduling and to convince more singles players to commit to doubles.

So here are how things are going to go in Madrid:

• The 32-team draw will feature up to 16 slots reserved for teams entering via their singles ranking

• The doubles tournament will be scheduled over 5 days and starting in the second week of the tournament

• The time between points will be reduced to 15 seconds following rallies shorter than four shots (four or more shots = 25 seconds)

• There will be fewer sit-downs at the changeovers

• Fans will be free to move around the courts during play

SPORTS SCIENCE
Tennis players, are they really not made like us?

All this time, it might have just been that the best tennis athlete’s eyes just see way more than anybody else. A trait they are also sharing apparently with the professional gamers. And with predators… 👀 

• As spotted by The Guardian, Ireland’s Trinity College Dublin published a paper in Plos One about temporal resolution and the results seem to indicate that some people can see more images per second than others, being then better able to track moving-objects. Objects like tennis balls. Do you know what matters a whole lot in sports and competitive gaming? Response time.

• In the research, some people saw a light source as constant whereas it was flashing about 35 times a second, while others detected flashes at rates greater than 60 times a second. Still, humans have nothing on falcons that can process 100 frames a second.

• Neurobiologist Kevin Mitchell, at Trinity College, is here to soothe the pain of every player who can’t seem to get their career going: “We believe that individual differences in perception speed might become apparent in high-speed situations where one might need to locate or track fast-moving objects, such as in ball sports, or in situations where visual scenes change rapidly, such as in competitive gaming. They may have an advantage over others before they have even picked up a racket and hit a tennis ball, or grabbed a controller and jumped into some fantasy world online.”

• It is still not clear if one can be trained for that. So for now, yes you can still tell your coach that it’s not you, it’s their eyes. Good luck with that!

MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO 
Thiem refuses to dwell on his glorious past

Dominic Thiem is not trying to get back to his best, he’s just trying to get back. As he explained, ahead of the tournament in Estoril, that his right wrist was again acting up, it’s easy to understand that trying to come back at all, is enough of a task right now. In Estoril, Thiem said to the press in Estoril after his first-round win against Maximilian Marterer (6-1, 6-7(3), 6-4).

Asked what the difference was between him now and the version of him in 2019/2020, the Austrian laughed: “It’s a different galaxy, actually!” And then he explained why he was not even thinking anymore about the player he was then. “I had a little bit more power back then, obviously a lot more confidence, probably I was playing the game better. There were a lot of differences, but I stopped comparing myself to back then because there’s no point and I try to do the best out of my situation right now.”

As far as that right wrist is concerned, it seems that it has decided to keep playing, for now. “I’m playing pain-free. I was putting the intensity down a bit in the last weeks of practice so then I’m ready for here, which is good. Obviously, it’s a little bit of a day-by-day thing but I’m having my physio here and he’s working a lot every day.”

WHAT ELSE? 
Some break points…

• Matteo Berrettini, in Marrakech, won his first match on the ATP Tour since August by beating Alexander Shevchenko (6-2, 6-1). The Italian, who was recently in the final of the Challenger in Phoenix (beaten by Nuno Borges, 7-5, 7-6), had a special lucky charm for that match: his friend, DJ Tiesto. “It's been great to have Tiesto by my side during the match,” Berrettini said. “We've been texting a lot. We both have busy schedules and we've been trying the last few years since I met him… for him to be where I was and finally we made it, so I'm really happy.”
  

• The Mutua Madrid Open (April 22 - May 5) announced its first invitations for the main draw of the Masters 1000 event: Kei Nishikori, Caroline Wozniacki, and Simona Halep are the lucky ones.
  

• Novak Djokovic is not coach-less. The World No.1 is accompanied by his compatriot Nenad Zimonjic for the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters. As seen in that picture posted by Patrick Mouratoglou on Instagram after a training session with Holger Rune.

Zimonjic, who’s known Djokovic for a very long time and has already in the past played the temporary advisor, has Djokovic’s former coach Goran Ivanisevic's full trust. Ivanisevic expressed his satisfaction about the choice to reporter Sasa Ozmo on Sport Klub and Tennis Majors: “I don’t know for how much longer Novak plans to keep on playing, but the perfect person is with him at the moment – Ziki (Nenad Zimonjic). He has a vast tennis knowledge, but what is most important: he knows Novak really well. Novak doesn’t need someone completely new, who is yet to get to know him.” Ivanisevic also explained that one of the reasons why he’s no longer coaching Djokovic is because of a “sense of saturation/fatigue” as “this really was a difficult and intense five years.”

• American qualifier Katie Volynets and Arantxa Rus of the Netherlands have played the longest WTA match of the year, in Charleston. Volynets had the last word in 3 hours and 43 minutes (6-2, 6-7(6), 7-6(6). The previous record was owned by Beatriz Haddad Maia's 3-hour and 42-minute victory over Magda Linette in Abu Dhabi.
  

• The Wuhan Open is coming back on the WTA calendar this October: the organizers of the WTA 1000 event announced it on Wednesday via Xin Hua news agency. “We are delighted to announce the return of the WTA1000 event to Wuhan, and reignite the thrill of elite tennis competition in one of Asia's most vibrant cities," said Jorge Salkeld, Senior Vice President, of Octagon Tennis. The inaugural event was held in 2014 but hasn’t come back since the Covid-19 outbreak.

BUSINESS
Sports investment is trending, while SI is still struggling

• JPMorgan Chase has created a new sports investment division, that will provide financial and advisory services to clients. The news came in a memo claiming that the top US and European sports franchises are valued at over $400 billion. No wonder everybody wants in!
  

• In a new episode of the drama that is surrounding Sports Illustrated, its owner Authentic Brands Group is making severe accusations against Manoj Bhargava’s Arena Group. The lawsuit says Arena Group tried to “burn everything down and destroy the SI brand”, and that Bhargava and Arena are interfering with SI’s transition to Minute Media. The lawsuit seeks $48,75 million.
  

• Coco Gauff signed a multi-year partnership with Carol’s daughter's hair care brand which is a reference in the natural hair care space. “I'm excited to help continue their mission of empowering millions of women and little girls to embrace their curls and coils with pride and authenticity”, Gauff said.

• Three years after going public, Endeavor is going back to the private mode. The company has found an agreement to be acquired by the private equity firm Silver Lake and its value is now estimated at $13 Billion. Silver Lake already owned 71% of the voting stock in Endeavor. WME/IMG, a very important tennis business player, is a part of Endeavor.

THE ODDITY OF THE DAY
Zombie cicadas

It just had to be shared because it’s too deliciously weird not to be put out there in the open. Cicadas don’t play tennis, yes I know. Still, enjoy the WTF thing you’re going to learn today.

With spring, millions of cicadas are about to come to the party. And so it’s time to remind you or to teach you that these insects have quite the storyline. For a start, their urination flow rate is two to three times stronger and faster than elephants and humans. Then, they can catch an STD (a white fungus) that will tear their gonads from their body: it’s deadly and turns them into zombies. Zombies. Not enough for you? Well, birds that would eat these zombies cicadas would start hallucinating. Walking Dead, the cicadas edition: you’re welcome.

EDITOR’S PICKS
The traveling writer edition

Here are some writing items I always love using, whether I’m on the road or not!

• You won’t catch me without my Moleskine notebooks, because yes some of us still love putting things down on paper even in this digital age: the traditional one, with plain pages please, and the thinner ones that you can get per two or three (my fav being the color kraft brown), and the one to brainstorm your upcoming travels or brainstorm your dream travels because even if you can’t even leave just now, who’s to say you cannot still plan! We love a plan here.

• If you’re more the bullet journal type, the Scribbles That Matter one may be for you (I really like mine). And the Leuchtturm1017 line is also a very good choice.

• Are you a Washi tape fan? I’ll try not to judge if your answer is no. Still, they’re everywhere and you need some even if you don’t think so right now! Don’t start me on pens because we would be here all day! But anything Faber-Castell, Pigma Micron, Tombow, Staedtler, or your good old Bic is a safe bet.

• WATCH, READ, and LISTEN TO when on the go: the German tv show, Dark, on Netflix, will help you kill all the time you need to kill while being wow-entertained (also hyper-focused because that show is wild), but if that’s not the case you can do like me and read IT from Stephen King again (before or after reading again The Shining and Doctor Sleep if you want a scary adventure), and as a sports person your curiosity demands that you listen to The Rodchenkov Affair.
  
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