Bagel Bites: Brain beats brawn

Internet ephemera from the tennis world and beyond. Have something you want to include? Join the Discord or hmu on Bluesky.

• I'm settled in to Toronto this week for the National Bank Open. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying my best.
• Hello to all the new subscribers, who found my little sandbox after I broke some news on Monday. Please mind the dust and exposed dry wall around the place. I'm still figuring out what this blog is going to be. But feel free to subscribe (it's free – there's no paid tiering or anything) if you want posts to come straight to your inbox.
• I'll have more thoughts on the RodPod next week, but needless to say, his interview with Iga Swiatek on this week's Served is outstanding. Iga emotionally recounts the moment she received the email informing her of the failed doping test – in the middle of a sponsor photoshoot, if you can believe it – and the subsequent hours, her evolving mindset during her 2025 "struggles" – airquotes mine – the technical changes she made to win Wimbledon, and more. (Served on YouTube)

• My personal favorite moments were (1) her concession that she tried to play with rage and defiance in the spring and it just didn't suit her (which, with her personality, makes absolute sense) and (2) and crediting Wim's patience in waiting for her to get with the program. Very honest stuff. For the view from the other side, see Wim's comments to Carole Bouchard after Wimbledon here. (The Second Serve)
• Discord Carrie dusted off this great 2023 GQ profile of Roddick. (GQ - Subscriber only)

• In unrelated-to-Iga-but-not-completely-unrelated-to-Iga news: The eagle has landed:

• Anna Chakvetadze is in her Oprah era, and the former World No.5 knew exactly what she was doing when she asked Goran Ivanisevic for his thoughts on Patrick Mouratoglou's critical words. That look into the camera is the definition of a vintage ChakAttack:

• Speaking of ChakAttack, let's roll back time to this iconic Fed Cup tie. Remind me to devote the rest of my life's work on an oral history of that tie. (YouTube)
• Tennis Canada hosted the first ATP Mental Health Panel at a Masters 1000 in Toronto (a similar panel was held in Montreal as well). I dropped into it mainly to see how the men speak about their mental health journeys, to see if they spoke about it differently than the WTA players. I enjoyed it a lot, and not only were Andrey and Casper great, but Craig Boynton turned out to be the low-key all-star of the whole thing. You can listen to the whole talk below:

• Today in NEWS I FLIPPING HATE: Bianca Andreescu withdrew from Montreal due to the ankle sprain, which resulted in torn ligaments, that she suffered in the final game of her straight-set win over Barbora Krejcikova in Round 1. This is annoying and sad on every level, and you can't shake the voodoo vibes when the injury happened just two points before the end of the match. I was really thinking that Bianca would turn the corner on the North American hard courts, having been buoyed by her 3-0 run through Hopman Cup to help Canada win the title. It just felt like the spark she needed to go full kaiju. I remain a full-on #BiancaBeliever.
• Mega props to Leylah Fernandez and phenomenal run to her first WTA 500 title in DC last weekend. Knocking off Jess Pegula and Elena Rybakina to do it is certainly something that should make people sit up and take notice. She held off Pegula in three tough sets and won two of tiebreaks vs. Rybakina. Whoosh.
• More on Leylah: Throwback to a few weeks ago when Carole Bouchard went long on her sub-par season:

When I saw Fernandez already close to tears just saying hello, I was like, “gosh that’s going to be painful,” but I’ll make it short. And then, sometimes it happens, she surely found it a nightmare to have to come to press, but once there, and it was just the two of us, she honestly just had it with her season so far and clearly needed to rant it out. In a very constructive way. That’s why I didn’t cut our chat that short, because I felt it was a win-win. That’s also why, even when they lose, players shouldn’t dodge media commitments because there they can put their own words on what’s going on, for real. (The Tennis Sweet Spot)

• Shake Shack this is your moment. (Josh Levin on BlueSky)
• Leylah lost to MAYA JOINT THE GOAT in the first round of Montreal, but that's ok because MAYA JOINT THE GOAT.
• Speaking of, the court has certified classes in her class-action lawsuit against the NCAA, which is great news for young athletes everywhere. It means the case can move forward. The case concerns the cap on prize money a collegiate athlete can take and remain eligible. If you want to nerd out, here's the court's decision.

• Ale-Alejandro, what are we going to do with you? While Leylah plowed through her draw and capped it off with a title and burgers, Foki plowed through the draw only to miss out on match points in the final to lose a true heartbreaker to Alex DeMinaur. The scenes, they were sad:

• Ben Rothenberg looked into how health care actually works on the ATP and WTA Tours.
• Jess Pegula is going for a rare three-peat in Canada. Only Monica Seles has done it. But first, snapping her two-match losing streak. (WTA)
• Lorenzo Musetti is well in the hunt for a spot in Turin. But he's going to have to figure out the hard courts. (ATP)

"On clay you have a little bit more time to defend yourself and to recover space. Here on hard courts or grass, the ball is coming faster and you have to be quicker. Especially on the return side, there’s many disadvantages, I would say, if you play one‑handed backhand."

• Then entry deadline has closed for the new exo-like US Open Mixed Doubles Championship presented by your favorite powdered collagen provider. First of all, I was unaware a tournament could have a name presenting sponsor for each event. What's next? The Australian Open Women's Singles Draw presented by Vegemite? Wait...don't answer that. Probably.
• Second, look, this whole thing is still an ever-evolving monster. If any of these singles players go deep in Cincinnati, you have to think their participation will be in question due to the quick turnaround – the mixed doubles is a two-day event that starts on Tuesday, Aug. 19. The Cincinnati Open finals are on Monday, Aug. 18. So the final field won't be known until, like, that day.
• But, if I'm Katerina Siniakova, who was Doubles No.1 just a week ago and won mixed doubles at Wimbledon and is pretty much the active WTA Doubles GOAT, and Marcelo Arevalo who is the ATP Doubles No.1 right now, I'm probably feeling quite a bit of disrespect that our team didn't even make the first cut of wild cards. This whole entry system is creating a lot of collateral damage that isn't necessary. It feels like the most blatant and brazen instance of a Grand Slam organization saying, very very loudly: money matters more than the integrity of the sport.
• Interesting to see the teams that entered that ultimately aren't in the field (whether by direct entry or wild card):

Among the partnerships the USTA had said were hoping to get into the tournament that were not on Tuesday’s list: Katie Boulter and Alex de Minaur, who are engaged to be married; Jasmine Paolini and Lorenzo Musetti; Aryna Sabalenka and Grigor Dimitrov; Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios; Karolina Muchova and Andrey Rublev; Iva Jovic and Jenson Brooksby; Gaby Dabrowski and Felix Auger-Aliassime; Demi Schuurs and Tallon Griekspoor; Katerina Siniakova and Marcelo Arevalo; Desirae Krawczyk and Evan King; and Su-Wei Hsieh and Jan Zielinski. (AP)

• Here's Holger Rune in Toronto on the US Open Mixed Doubles, where he's set to play with Amanda Anisimova:

"First of all, it's a great idea for the US Open to do a mixed doubles event. Because for singles players, and especially top singles players, there's not many who wants to play the mixed doubles, because it's in the second week of the tournament, so it's usually where you need more rest than playing. I think it's a fun idea to do it in the preparation week."

• And let's be clear: This event is totally going to work. It will be super fun and everyone will love it and it will bring lots of buzz and attention on the US Open and deliver incredible value to the sponsors. And other non-Wimbledon Slams would be crazy not to consider something similar. But at what cost? And, to quote Maya Rudolph as Dionne Warwick, to what end?

• I am a big supporter of Colette Lewis doing a Wertheim-esque 50 parting shots. Her unique perspective and second-to-none experience is such a resource in our sport. (Tennis Kalamazoo)
• Bring back cringe. Bring back sincerity. Bring back earnestness. Been seeing and watching a lot of videos on YouTube about Gen Z's caustic aversion to "cringe" but this from Ocean Vuong on what it's like to see it play out in university arts classes is truly stressing me out:

• From Discord Jonathan: Great profile and obituary for the great Tom Lehrer. (NY Times)
• Google search is completely broken and there goes the neighborhood. (404 Media)

Yesterday the Pew Research Center released a report based on the internet browsing activity of 900 U.S. adults which found that Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who don’t encounter an AI summary. To be precise, only 1 percent of Google searches resulted in the users clicking on the link in the AI summary, which takes them to the page Google is summarizing. 

• Let's be clear on what this means: The AI summaries at the top of the Google search page – which are taken from information researched and written by human beings – are making it so that the users are NOT clicking on the very links providing said info. And whatever will these AI summaries summarize when all media and news and research humans are put out of business because they broke the business model? Absolute dumbshit techbros.
• On the topic of technology, I have been reading Mark Kurlansky's Paper, which is a history of, you guessed it, paper. Really enjoying it so far, as I've enjoyed all his other books. Paper will outlast us all.
• Shoutout to Pho 128 for keeping me blissfully fed through the first few days in Toronto. The bun rieu was no joke, their goi cuon and cha gio were outstanding, and I will go back to finally try the bone marrow pho, which makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

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