Bagel Bites: Lifeguard on duty

Internet ephemera from the tennis world and beyond. Have something you want to include? Join the Discord  – we have a really nice and active community growing there – or hmu on Bluesky.

• Previously on The Bagel: I went long on Aryna.
• Aryna Sabalenka says she's not sure she'll play the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships next year after tournament director Salah Tahlak criticized her decision to skip the tournament last month. Ben Rothenberg is on the ground in Miami so follow his work for all the wet and humid tea. (Bounces)

"I’m not sure if I ever want to go back there after his comment. For me it’s too much."

Sabalenka may avoid championships in Dubai after ‘ridiculous’ comment

The Dubai tournament director said stronger penalties were needed for player withdrawals while Jack Draper continued his comeback at the Miami Open

The GuardianTumaini Carayol

• Honestly, good for her if she actually does skip it. A backtrack would just add to the general sense that players say...things...and rarely have the gumption to back it up. Which obviously undermines any threats of collective action. Then again, if she continues to dominate the start of the season, she'll likely skip Doha and Dubai all the time anyway?

• What in the Cancun is going on at Hard Rock? The heavy and non-stop rain from last week and over the weekend knocked Stadium Court out of commission for the first days of the tournament. They're hoping it's back in action for Thursday, which is also when the seeded players will get underway. Or maybe they won't get underway given that rain has delayed all play so far on Wednesday:

• Coco Gauff says she's fit enough for Miami, though the MRI was inconclusive. (Palm Beach Daily News via Yahoo)

• A deep look at the State of Mirra Andreeva from Carole Bouchard, who I regret to say, is pretty level-headed in this one when she point out that, guys, sometimes it's just about the tennis. (The Tennis Sweet Spot)

I’m not sure she’s feeling comfortable with her game, and the way she’s playing right now, and that totally could trigger that temper of hers. I asked her in Melbourne about how she found a way to reset this winter after what looked like a rough end of 2025, and she was also asked why she went so down on herself and was so upset. She answered that the way she was playing wasn’t matching the way she wanted to play or the way she plays in her head, and that’s also why I feel this is the same issue now. Tennis players of that level are often extreme perfectionists, and when you combine this with a tough-to-control temper (hi, Andy!), it can lead to the top of the tantrums ladder. So I’d say here, there’s a need to go and find the triggers, and that’s not only the losses.

• A 500+ page book hates to see Iga Swiatek coming. She's currently reading The Bee Sting.

I Can’t Get Enough Of The Kaiju Battle Between Aryna Sabalenka And Elena Rybakina | Defector

Raw power is winning out these days. While one of the great pleasures of the sport is watching the intersection of sharply contrasting styles of play, I have temporarily set aside all those nuances. The main matchup I want to watch right now involves two players with almost identical agendas: Hit the winner at the…

DefectorGiri Nathan

• Reem Abuleil poses the question to the chasing pack: do you train specifically to beat Carlos and Jannik? Or do you keep the blinders on? I remember asking a similar question to the women when Ash Barty was carving them up. The answer: the top players started spending 10 minutes of practice dealing with a backhand slice. (The National)

Medvedev, a former world No 1 and Grand Slam champion, had a tough 2025 campaign and didn’t face Sinner or Alcaraz all season. Speaking to The National last month in Dubai, where he won the title, the Russian said he used to focus on building a game to beat Sinner and Alcaraz when he was facing them frequently.

“Especially when I was making semis of a slam on a kind of constant basis and then I was playing them. Now, no, because I haven't played them for more than a year. So I need to focus more on how do I get to these guys and then I can focus on how do I beat them. But for the moment, not the focus at all.”

• Honestly, I don't think there is a Third Man. But that doesn't mean I'm not excited to drop a THIRD MAN reference.

The “Third Man” has been a staple in books and film ever since the classic movie of the same name was released in the 1950s. He—or she—is usually a mysterious figure who drives or resolves the plot without having an outsized, visible role in it.

Many think that ATP tennis is currently in need of a third man, to prevent the “Sincaraz” Grand Slam duopoly—glorious as it is at the moment—from growing stale.

“[Jannik] Sinner and [Carlos] Alcaraz have pulled away from everybody for almost the last two and a half years,” supercoach and broadcast analyst Brad Gilbert told me recently. “It’s kind of like we’ve been waiting because—great as they are—it’s just the two of them.”

We were relieved to get Sincaraz to compensate for the loss of the Big Three. But our infatuation with them makes it easy to forget that a “trivalry” is in many ways even richer: Borg-McEnroe-Connors, anyone? Novak Djokovic has waged the good fight to remain the third man, but he’s 38 and there’s daylight between him and the Top 2, even if it isn’t as great as the distance between Djokovic and everyone else.

• I'm as guilty as anyone of the reflexive instinct – I mean, it really is how I feel – to declare this current duopoly....kind of boring! And I 100 percent acknowledge that this isn't fair to either Carlos or Jannik, especially when, of the three tournaments at which they've played together this year, only ONE yielded a head-to-head showdown. Like...idk, maybe the whole "A tennis tournament is an event played over seven to 14 days where professional players chase around a little yellow fuzzy ball and in the end Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner play for the title" thing is completely overblown. It's very possible!

Jack Draper: My body is still adjusting

Jack Draper says his body is still adjusting after a long-term injury, despite an impressive victory over Novak Djokovic at Indian Wells.

Yahoo SportsSonia Twigg

• And if that IS the case, then this idea that we need a "Third Man" may also be completely overblown. Why? Because "The Third Man" IS the peloton! The spoiler IS the chasing pack! The trivalry IS Carlos vs. Jannik vs. The Field. And so far this year, depending on how you define the Sincaraz thing – is it Carlos vs. Jannik or is it Carlos and Jannik vs. The Field – the Field has spoiled two of the three chances for a Sincaraz Final. That's not nothing.

• A fun thing to do when you meet a really passionate tennis fan that got into the sport in the last five years, is tell them that there was a time when it wasn't even a question that the Miami Open was considered "The Fifth Slam" and Indian Wells was a quaint little quiet tournament that was in danger of getting moved before Larry Ellison bought it in 2009.

The Toss: Indian Wells, Miami compete for ‘Fifth Slam’ status

Roger Federer has won the Indian Wells title four times, and has claimed two titles in Miami. (Getty Images) Last week on The Toss, Chris Oddo joined to debate

Sports IllustratedC.W. Sesno

Racket Science: The dramatic Indian Wells-Miami Open role reversal

At one point, the Miami Open was easily the biggest tournament outside the Grand Slams, but that’s not the case anymore, thanks to Indian Wells.

ESPNPeter Bodo

• The universe still does not understand: all this shit just makes Daniil Medvedev stronger:

• It's like nuclear radiation and Godzilla. (Wikipedia)
• I saw some weekend discourse about Amanda Anisimova signing up with a tequila brand and y'all seriously need to grow the hell up and stop infantilizing professional tennis players. I don't know why our sport seems particularly prone to this – remember Britain losing its mind when Maria sold...candy??? – but it's so embarrassing.

Maria Sharapova’s brand strategy is shameless but at least it’s honest | Marina Hyde

Marina Hyde: The world’s richest female athlete’s latest dash for cash may have been put on hold but there was a certain candour among the candy

The GuardianMarina Hyde

• Nevermind the fact that Jessica Pegula chugs a beer, Aryna Sabalenka and Taylor Fritz are also sponsored by tequila companies, and the whole business case for tennis being its reputation for a bougie and boozy sport. Amanda's TWENTY FOUR YEARS OLD. Be serious. Saying Amanda repping an alcohol brand is endorsing alcoholism is like saying Iga repping Oshee is endorsing water intoxication. (NBC 5 Chicago)

• Steve Tignor previews the WTA side of Miami, where Aryna and Elena will try and make it four consecutive big-stage finals. (Tennis.com)
• Taylor Fritz is considering skipping the clay. (Tennis.com)
• Chris Eubanks and CoCo Vandeweghe say JUST KIDDING. My only question is: why wait nearly a full week to address it when the clip was going viral super fast? (Front Office Sports)

Eubanks said he had planned to react “annoyed” or “embrassed” about the topic of their serve speeds.

“In my mind, I go: ‘I’m just gonna show that I’m a little annoyed or I’m a little embarrassed that we’re still talking about it. And we’re gonna have a little back and forth about it,’” Eubanks said. “We went on, we did it. None of us who were around, myself, Coco or Steve [Weissman], thought anything about it in the moment.”

“I had the overly dramatic eye roll, which I thought would come across as a joke because of how dramatic it was.”

• Is Destanee Aiava coming back? (Instagram)

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• Cool little look at the International Tennis Hall of Fame's tennis card collection:

• It took five years of reporting and The New York Times' bombshell on Cesar Chavez's history of sexual abuse, including raping Labor icon Dolores Huerta, is very much worth your time. A very crushing read. (NY Times; Medium.com)
• Slightly related, I'm killing time in a LA hotel until my parents fly down on Thursday, so I've been crushing Netflix true-crime documentaries. Can we all just agree that these things are pretty mid? I watched THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE, THE CARMAN FAMILY DEATHS, and A DEADLY AMERICAN MARRIAGE, and harrowing stories aside, they were docs that should have just been an article. I would have read the heck out of these if they were in The Atlantic. Instead, these all felt over-dramatized and formulaic – do a shot for every establishing drone shot – and when you watched them back-to-back-to-back they were just...forgettable? Which is a shame because these are all horrific stories with very real victims.
• THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR wasn't more than a terrible news story that you feel would have remained that way except they got access to the police cams, which....You gotta ask why and how they got that access from the police. Which the only answer to that is that they had police cooperation. Which leads to the documentary making the police look good. Which it did. Which...sus? [EDITED: Thanks to Discord Morgan for flagging that the director actually FOIA'd the footage so I take that back!]
• One I did like was VICTIM/SUSPECT which didn't feel sensational. The entry point to the story about "false" rape claims is a Oakland reporter who spends three years trying to report the story. It also interviews sociologists and a San Diego police officer who trains cops (correctly) on how to interview rape victims. It's the only one of these that I watched that felt like a documentary and not like "content". Would recommend.
• When it comes to NETFLIX docs, my GOATs remain THE KEEPERS, MAKING A MURDERER, KEEP SWEET: PRAY AND OBEY, ATHLETE A, ICARUS. INTO THE FIRE: LOST DAUGHTER, SINS OF OUR MOTHER, and GONE GIRLS were also good.
• Bop of the Day: Living in a hotel recreationally is such a weird existence.