Rando Thoughts from Wimbledon

1. Watching Alexandra Eala beat Iga Swiatek in straight sets this morning. Between points, Eala walks around like a waitress getting off a 32-hour shift at Waffle House, and I respect it. 

2. Days after Serena Williams' first-round loss, folks are still debating the handshake Serena gave? Which was a perfectly fine handshake. But folks want to know why she didn't say something nice to Maya Joint after the match. And I am sorry, but, like what?? Joint played the whole match with her eyes the size of saucers. Which is fine. She was nervous. And she didn't play her best match. Serena also didn't play her best match. It was not a great match. Is that OK to say? It was sort of difficult to watch! Also, here is a thought experiment. Let's say you are a 20-year-old professional tennis player, and by some miracle, you are drawn into a match with one of the all-time greats of the game. This isn't disputed. So my question is: Wouldn't YOU say something after the match? Like, "*unintelligible*" or "Wow. I can't believe this just happened," or "You're awesome," or "OK, let's never do that again because my nerves are SHOT! Ha!" If you're unhappy with a perfectly normal handshake, why is the onus on Serena? 

3. After this match, Serena mentioned as an aside that she has hurt her knee and although Wimbledon did their level best to accommodate her (rumor has it, offering to postpone she and Venus' match to late September after the U.S. Open), she finally did have to withdraw today. It's a shame, because this was the wildcard I was most interested in. I have been of the opinion that Venus Williams has been on the cusp of winning a match this year and I wondered if she needed Serena there to make it happen. I am probably fantasizing at this point, but I'm staying on my cloud!

4. I think the only thing that could get me remotely interested in the men's draw is ... I mean, I don't know. I'm kind of curious about Felix Auger-Aliassime? Ooh, or Grigor Dimitrov. After last year? You have to root for this guy.

5. If Taylor Townsend and Katerina Sinaikova ever split up as a doubles team, I'll be inconsolable. The ribbon situation brings me an unreasonable amount of optimism that people can still work together towards a common goal without being complete jerks about it. 

6. The women's draw, however. We've got last year's finalists already out of it, along with Elena Rybakina, who has been really struggling to keep her bike on the path this year. The top half of the draw is insane: Naomi Osaka v. Aryna Sabalenka (who is also on the shaky bike team this year, and may need to keep the training wheels for a bit), Karolina Muchova v. Barbora Krejcikova (who is playing pretty well), Jessica Pegula v. Iva Jovic (a true toss-up, I think!) and Belinda Bencic v. Coco Gauff. 

7. Not quite Wimbledon, but there is a former champion who is not in the draw and might not be for several years if tennis' governing body has its way. Marketa Vondrousova has been suspended by the (get this) International Tennis Integrity Association for refusing a drug test. And I just can't anymore. This is insane. We got Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek FAILING drug tests and both get a finely curated "suspension" that somehow means neither has to miss a Slam. Like, these "suspensions" were clearly negotiated out! Four years for not taking one?! And truly, Vondrousova's explanation seems reasonable. And also? This idea that surprise testing playing a role in keeping the sport clean is a joke when you consider that there were two players who failed a test and the scales seemed to tip for them because of who they were. I will add that if I were Simona Halep, I would be a menace on the Internet every time something like this happened. An absolute menace. They'd have to ban me from the Twitter.

French Open '26: Hot Enough For Ya?

Well, I don't know about you amateurs, but the French Open has turned out exactly the way I expected it to -- the world 114 competing for the women's title while the guy who I guess can win a Slam only when the rest of the field has been decimated. So that's good, I guess! 

Look, I have thoughts, so let's just go:

is the title of this section. 

So some members of the black delegation on the pro tour got together at the beginning of the French Open for a private dinner, hosted by Naomi Osaka and Taylor Townsend. And of course nonblack folks had something to say, along the lines of this brilliant tweet:

Where to start. I'll start with why I went to a historically black college (Hampton, baby, the real HU!). It's not because diversity is a problem for me. It's that being a black person in a majority white world can be hard. Ask any person of color who has worked in corporate America. When I was coming up, there were all types of narratives about black people -- we go to prison, we don't have baby daddies, we're on crack cocaine, gangsta rap. Believe it or not, it's annoying to have that nonsense following you.

The people who tweet about being left out when they were never even on the invite list suffer from a lack of imagination, I fear. It seems they have never walked into a room and immediately understood there was no one there who looked like them, and that if they were going to stay in that room, they would simply have to deal with it. And they were going to stay. And so of course, they've never understood the relief you feel when finally you see others who look like you, partly because they stayed in the room. Still, though. You're in the room but not always part of it, and sometimes it's nice to hang out with your people, so you can finally just relax before it's back to the grind. 

And yet there seems to be this actual confusion about gatherings like this. It is due, I think, to this privilege on the part of those who have never really been left out, have always been centered. And so of course, why can't they come to the dinner? 

Mostly because no one invited you. Maybe get reservations at the Masters golf tournament. 

Mirra Andreeva Wins the French Open

It goes without saying that Mirra Andreeva is a special player and winning the French is likely just the beginning for her. The thing that struck me during the post-match celebration was the press conference with her coach, Conchita Martinez. I realized that it was the first time in all my time watching tennis, that a woman coach was being celebrated for a Slam win. 

When I was first getting into tennis, Martinez was just getting out, and she didn't look like anything great to my untrained eye. She wasn't flashy like the Williams sisters or the big hitters who began to occupy the top 10. But as I began to understand the game better, I saw her genius, how she moved the ball around, crafted a point. She took her skills and built a great career. One slam, yes, but 43 other titles, five Fed Cups, a regular in the top 10 for almost a decade. I mean.

I'm giving Andreeva (or the people around her) props for not just hiring some dude to coach her. And I hope more women step up to coach. Martina Hingis? Kim Clijsters (apparently coaching Katie Volynets, a name that has to have been manufactured, right?)? Steffi Graf? 

'Nuanced:' You Keep Using that Word. I Do Not Think You Know What it Means

All weekend, I saw Alexander Zverev's French Open run as one that is complex and nuanced. That's because it's divided the tennis community on whether it should be celebrated, but the cause for the divide isn't nuanced at all. 

Here is what I understand to be true. Zverev has been credibly accused of hitting two former girlfriends, to the point of leaving marks. The evidence of one of these rows can be seen on camera because it was during one of these tournaments. A reporter wrote about this and has faced more consequences somehow. The ATP looked at the case and ruled that they couldn't come to any conclusions. The mother of Zverev's child took him to court and before the trial could finish, he opted to settle and pay her.  So far, not complicated. 

Zverev also happened to be a really good tennis player and on Sunday, he won his first Slam. Lots of fans aren't happy about this because lots of signs point to him being an abuser who has never faced consequences, even though he's never been found guilty as the result of any investigation. This is fairly straightforward too. 

There's nothing nuanced here and the only reason it could even look that way is that we play in our own faces all the time now. We've (in the U.S.) got a president who says one thing and does another and winks. Some people see the evidence of the lie, and choose to focus on something else, like the economy. Oops, like immigration. Oops. Affordability. D'oh! The simplest conclusion is that 1+1=2, but some people are like, "What if it's actually three?" as if that makes them an abstract thinker who can think outside the box. Yo, sometimes the box is there for a reason.

It's simple to determine whether you think that Zverev is worthy of your support. You can see the evidence of his character. Some people see that evidence and decide that this is just a conversation about tennis, and he really deserved that Slam. He played well! He did. 

And I don't support him. This is super not nuanced.

Quick Hits

I turned on the mens double final over the weekend and was like, "OK, still with Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos? These guys have to be older than even me!" First of all, they're not, and second of all, these 40-year-old dudes just won the French Open again. Wild ...

It's crazy how some women's doubles teams seem to be in flux. Jelena Ostapenko is always playing with someone different. I thought Gabrielle Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe would play together forever, but they split up this year, too. Hsieh Su-wei is out there looking for a regular partner again. But it looks like  Townsend and Katerina Siniakova have figured out that if something works, let it cook, as the kids say. They dropped exactly one set during their run to the French Open title. 

TWA's Two-Week-Old Wimbledon Wrap

I’m not gonna lie – I was unprepared for Wimbledon this year. As ready as I was for RG, I was that unready for Wimbledon. I turned on the internet and results were rolling in and I was like, what?!?? So, here’s some delayed reactions from Wimbledon, which apparently is over?!?? 

1. That men’s draw. No disrespect, but Novak Djokovic just advanced through the easiest draw known to tenniskind, and that would have been true if Alex de Minaur had not withdrawn due to injury. No offense, Alex. After two weeks of listening to commentators talk about how “fresh” Djokovic was, here’s my counterpoint – if you’re playing in a two-week tournament, you want challenges, you want to see where your game is lacking today and give yourself a chance to fix it. The final at Wimbledon isn’t the time to have to work on that. Meanwhile, Carlos Alcaraz had seeded players from round three – tough ones. Yes, there is such a thing as getting tired out. But Alcaraz had that happy medium – good matches against good players and a good old-fashioned scare that can refocus you (Tiafffffff-) 

2. OK, so the Americans are coming. (-ooooeeeeee!!) That was a tough draw for Frances Tiafoe but taking the world No. 3 to five sets is nothing to be ashamed of. And I also can’t stop wondering about the alternate reality of Madison Keys closing out Jasmine Paolini before she got injured. Ben Shelton taking Jannik Sinner to five. Tommy Paul playing a tough match against Alcaraz. Taylor Fritz taking out Alexander Zverev. Thank you for your service. This week, five of the top 15 women in the world are American.  

https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/draws/gentlemens-singles/full 

3. This is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but I am admittedly still trying to get over Emma Raducanu ditching Andy Murray at his last Wimbledon, but also wondering what Andy Murray was thinking and what his options were. Apparently, Raducanu has never ever in her professional career played any kind of doubles. Why on earth would he even want to play with some newb at his last chance to win a match at Wimbledon?! Just because she’s British?!?? That’s crazy enough, but for Miss Raducanu to pull a Stefanie Graf on Murray and back out of the tournament so she could concentrate on the singles draw (which didn’t go great). It takes a lot of nerve to do something like that, but she has frankly not earned that behavior – she doesn’t have the gravitas for that kind of diva move. And Andy Murray at Wimbledon is no John McEnroe. (This is a good thing.) 

4. Novak Djokovic is a brat. I’ve never seen a more emotionally stunted champion. It’s almost as if being one of the best tennis players of all time isn’t enough for him. Beyond that, he also needs complete fealty from fans, even when he’s acting like a complete jackwagon. I see politics in this man’s future. 

4a. However, he is right about one thing: https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/novak-djokovic-says-pickleball-is-making-tennis-endangered/ 

5. Carlos Alcaraz is what tennis needs right now, I guess. This is no shade against him at all. But tennis is always picking at itself, trying to figure out what to change to make the game more exciting. Nothing, I’m saying. The game is fine and great and suspenseful and is full of amazing athletes with compelling stories that the powers that be do nothing with. BUT if we are saying the game needs excitement, a showman, than let me introduce you to Carlos Alcaraz and this ridiculous point he played with a young man who is also somewhat promising and understands showmanship.  

https://x.com/ProCozzo/status/1813139668742926681 

Seriously, help me. I can't stop watching this.

He’s a special one, that’s for sure. The way I was cussing at my TV on Sunday when he lost that 40-0 lead while serving for the match because I knew that giving Djokovic an inch is like giving him a mile? And then the way he recovered to dominate that tiebreak? Woof. 

6. Speaking of almost giving away a match, congrats to Barbora Krejcikova for her second Slam, which, like her first Slam win, came out of nowhere. I didn’t have her beating Danielle Collins, let alone Elena Rybakina. But there she was in the final. And I am always partial to short players kicking up dust so I was rooting for Paolini (aka Pao-Pao in my home during tense matches). I’m not sure if Krejcikova has the consistency to bring this level to every tournament, but her serve during the tournament was ridiculous. Paolini doesn’t have that big a serve, but props to her as well for her advancement through a very difficult draw on a surface that really shouldn’t work for her game.  

7. I’m always down to watch doubles, too, and especially when firecracker Taylor Townsend is in the draw. I'm just leaving this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0Z3Zwdjxg&ab_channel=Wimbledon