Bagel Bites: Miracle in Cincinnati

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

Happy Monday, everyone, where a joint Masters 1000/WTA 1000 is on Day....5? Not sure I'll ever get used to that.

• Here's a quick link-cap of the week(s?) that was (were?) in Toronto and Montreal, where the story was, without a doubt, one Victoria Mboko.
  • I got to write about Mboko's giant-slaying week for The Guardian. Thank you to the Guardian!
  • Mboko-whisperer Carole Bouchard urges tennis to protect Vicky at all costs:

"The sport has just one job here: not burning that kid out. “I don’t have so many people around me, and it’s kept me very calm and very comfortable,” she told me this summer. Quiet off the court but enjoying the frenzy of a big court’s crowd is also Mboko’s recipe: She’s been swinging in Montreal in front of a packed crowd entirely devoted to her without being overwhelmed; another sign of a solid foundation. More? You can see she’s enjoying it." (The Second Serve)

• Th0ughts and prayers to Owen Lewis, who is still trying to pick up his goopy brain bits after watching Mboko do her thing:

"The new factor here was Mboko, who systematically shattered Osaka’s resistance, rather than merely capitalizing on it shattering independently. I expect her to leave a litany of confused, defeated opponents in her wake over the next decade-plus that bears this impression out." Think about it: Who’s safe from a player who is bothered by nothing, can play any style on any given point, and can hang with the biggest ballstrikers? (Defector)

• Andrea Petkovic's read on how it all ended for Naomi Osaka is dead right:

"What was supposed to become a triumphant home-coming to the elite of tennis quickly turned into a sort of tragedy. She played a nearly perfect first set in terms of tactics - so disciplined, so alert - but when a few points in the beginning of the second didn’t go as planned she lost her way so disastrously that it, too, was somehow mesmerising to watch. It wasn’t the tennis that went away. It was a grand disappointment in self that turned into despondency and Naomi never recovered from it. Maybe the crowd got to her, maybe playing a younger version of herself made her miss the years when everything was still possible, maybe she wanted it so frickin’ much that clarity of mind left her like that one boyfriend of mine left me on a tramway a long time ago." (Finite Jest via Substack)

• As I posted on Bluesky, I will never understand what exactly Naomi Osaka has done that makes people so graceless and angry. You just spent 30 minutes watching her very clearly struggle with her emotions at the end of the Montreal final and then, when she very clearly wants to get out of there as quickly as possible, she forgets to congratulate her opponent, you project this petty, hateful, vindictive personality on a person who, in my personal experience – which is way more than most people have – has never once acted in a hateful, vindictive, petty manner towards a person. You know what she has done many, many, many times? BEEN SUPER AWKWARD DURING TROPHY CEREMONIES. I am truly tired and exhausted by the salivating glee that so many people seem to take from her most vulnerable moments. It's really ugly.

"We say things, and sometimes we mess up, and life goes on. And I just think there's a lot of self-righteousness in our culture. I think people are very quick to critique." – Danielle Collins in The National

• It's a trend that tennis really needs to move on from, for all players. A little grace and understanding never hurt anyone. As Reem Abulleil writes in her great piece, "Yes, sportsmanship comes front and centre in a sport like tennis, but the backlash that comes after a moment of poor sportsmanship or a lapse in judgment so often outweighs the incident itself." (The National)
• But also congrats to Ben Shelton! He had a monster week en route to his first Masters 1000, beating Mannarino, 25th seed Nakashima, 13th seed Cobolli, 9th seed De Minaur, No.2 seed Fritz, and 11th seed Khachanov. (ATP)
• Here's a 2003 interview with Bryan Shelton on coaching his son. I really love their dynamic, so I was surprised to learn last week – ATP Outsider – that Bryan gets a lot of stick from fans and pundits? Weird. (ATP)

• And now, we are in Mason, Ohio for the Cincinnati Open, which in case you haven't heard, has received an absolutely absurd facelift. The tennis community is a cynical bunch and you have to do something pretty extraordinary to get universal agreement on, like, anything. But Ben Navarro's $260 million investment into the facilities at the Lindner Family Tennis Center blew my socks off.

• Obviously if you haven't been to the Cincy Open before, a lot of the changes may seem abstract. But the common refrain from the players has been "I can't believe they did this in a year," which...correct! The tournament had been working on some of the "invisible" infrastructure changes over the last two years, but construction began immediately after the conclusion of the event in August last year. The resulting work resulted in doubling the tournament site in size and the construction of a 56,0000 square foot "Clubhouse" which now houses the player lounges and restaurant. There's also a renovated Performance Center, Tennis Channel studio, as well as fan-facing improvements like suites, a new Pavillion, and a huge expansion of fan-friendly practice facilities – Cincinnati now has more practice courts than Indian Wells. The intent is for the entire venue to be used for other entertainment events next year.
• Why does all this matter? Because the sport is now asking players – and staff, but hey, who cares about staff! – to work at an event site for two weeks. A tournament that puts this much investment and priority in making the players as comfortable as possible earns a lot of goodwill.
• Maria Sakkari gave the Cincinnati Open rave reviews and said it's now a tournament that she feels "deserves" to be an expanded event. "There's other tournaments that I'm not going to name, that personally in my opinion, they don't deserve to be two weeks because the facilities are not great, the food is not as good as it is here. If I were to speak about myself, I would rather have less money at those tournaments and less days, and have a few tournaments throughout the season that are two weeks." Hear her whole answer on the topic below:

Maria Sakkari - Cincinnati deserves the two-week format

0:00

/114.187755

1×

• Yulia Putintseva also raved about the changes in the new What The Vlog:

• Australian media continues to do tew much, but the "Fellow American heiress" did make me laugh. (Nine.au.com)
• Danielle Collins played through the pain of a herniated disk. (Tennis.com)
• Welcome to the club: Major League Baseball has its first female umpire. (The Athletic)
• Stefano Vukov's suspension has been lifted after the matter went to private arbitration. (The Athletic)
• Some fun pieces from veteran sports journalist Diane Pucin on Taylor Townsend and Iva Jovic. (Cincinnati.com)

• Paula Badosa, a semifinalist last year, has withdrawn from the US Open due to her ongoing back injury. (AP)
• Is Ben Shelton the one that will break the American drought? Some people are saying. (USA Today via Yahoo)

• I'm siding with Emma here. It had been 10 minutes! Also it's really hot and humid! Get that baby inside somewhere!

• To quote the legendary Bong Joon Ho:

• No wait, wrong one.
• This one:

• Iga Swiatek's sports psychologist Daria Abramowicz – though after this interview it might be better to call her a performance psychologist or performance manager – sat down for a two-hour podcast in Poland, which has been helpfully subtitled in English. I watched – read? – the whole thing while I was in Toronto and I found it super interesting. I might write more on it at another time, but for now, just wanted to shout it out. (Break Point Podcast)

• Ben Rothenberg's statistical breakdown of the most aced players on the WTA is great. (Bounces via Substack)
• Tumaini Carayol caught up with the trailblazing Frances Tiafoe. (The Guardian)
• I loved MATERIALISTS and I love everything about what Celine Song did here, both in substance and style:

• The trend of influencers, influencer-journalists, or otherwise serious journalists trying to be hip and cute and taking their 5-10 minutes with a creator or artist and being thoroughly unserious and/or forcing that unseriousness on the interviewee in hopes of nothing more than getting a reaction that can go viral on social media...I'VE HAD IT! And this isn't just confined to the arts. We see it constantly in sports and, yes, I will be old-man-yells-at-the-sky and say STOP IT ALREADY!
• Shoutout to WEAPONS. That fucking ruled. Big recommend! Go watch WEAPONS! Movies are back, baby!