This week on the ATP Tennis Podcast…
JILL CRAYBAS ON BREAK POINT HELPING FANS TO GET TO KNOW THE PLAYERS BETTER – “Netflix did a great job with ‘Drive to Survive’, and I think you get a better insight into the players when you understand where that emotion is coming from more often. When I watch the Olympics, I don’t know a lot of the athletes from curling or biathlon but you get a five minute snippet of a background story and all of a sudden your immersed in how they are doing in curling or biathlon or whatever sport it is that I don’t follow throughout the year, but I’m paying attention now and I’m hoping that is what this does.”
PETER MARCATO ON BREAK POINT LETTING FANS FIND OUT WHAT GOES ON BEHIND-THE-SCENES – “The biggest thing for me is to get an idea of what goes on behind-the-scenes. We might see a match and see what happens but we don’t see the aftermath, we don’t see them travelling around, you know, players who are in a relationship and then they don’t see each other for weeks because the tours diverge, that sort of thing I think is fascinating.”
JILL CRAYBAS ON THE UNITED CUP – “I just ran into Petra Martic who was involved with the Croatia team and I asked her about it and she was just glowing and she just said she wants more of these team events because whilst they see the male players at tour events, they actually get to hang out, spend time with each other, get to know each other and it was a whole different experience.”
PETER MARCATO ON WHETHER TENNIS CAN DO A BETTER JOB OF TELLING IT’S STORY – “The tricky part is that it’s in many different sections and many different parts. We have two main tours, we have the Grand Slams, we have the ITF who run some of the team events and the lower levels, it’s really hard to tell that story cohesively, to get a full narrative, particularly on something that runs week-in-week-out, but it’s something we should be looking at to then promote the sport as widely as possible, not just to watch it, but to get people playing it as well.”
CHRIS BOWERS ON THE VALUE OF TELLING PLAYERS BACK-STORIES – “There are so many good back stories and this is perhaps something that’s even bigger in something like wheelchair tennis where understandably they want to promote this as a tour, but the really interesting thing about the wheelchair tour is the back story of the players, what tennis has actually done for them. I do wonder whether the key for tennis being able to tell a better story is that the tennis governing bodies need to develop a better relationship with the players agents, so that there is a greater responsibility on behalf of the players to serve their sport.”
JILL CRAYBAS ON NOVAK DJOKOVIC – “It’s incredible what was thrown at Djokovic last year and the fact that he finished fifth and won the tour finals at the end of the year is just amazing and it’s great to see him back in Australia.”
PETER MARCATO ON RAFAEL NADAL AGAINST JACK DRAPER IN THE FIRST ROUND – “You’ve got to get the best of Nadal in three out of five sets and that’s always the dynamic. The top players are always able to manage that so well and for the younger players, because there’s no three out of five other than the majors, they don’t get that experience. Jack Draper won’t be scared of Nadal as he has a big game and massive serve and in 2022 he learnt a lot about himself and his game and he’s been making massive improvements, but the big thing for me is that after two sets he’d normally be walking off and be in the locker room with everyone saying how good he was, but here he’s got to step out for a third set.”
CHRIS BOWERS ON MATTEO BERRETTINI – “He could get tremendous support. All the people who featured in the Netflix documentary might find a lot of people saying ‘Oh Berrettini, he’s that guy who’s lovely to his granny’ and whilst I don’t want to over value that particular scene, if that brings out people who really do cheer for him, he could find this is a home tournament.”
PETER MARCATO ON THE AUSTRALIANS – “On the men’s side having De Minaur and Kyrgios on the same side of the draw doesn’t really help things along the way, but in terms of contenders to go deep, you might get a few who can cause a few upsets in the first week, but they’d be the two in the second week and obviously then there’s Kyrgios and Kokkinakis in the doubles.”
– Show presented by Chris Bowers
– Podcast guests – AO Radio Commentator Peter Marcato and former player Jill Craybas
Source Tennis – ATP World Tour
