Bagel Bites: Aura farm

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• Previously on The Bagel: Czech tennis finally broke through.
• Round 1 at the US Open is noooot quite in the books. Yes, they have been playing for three days and, yes, they've pretty much been playing past midnight all three nights. AND YET! Rain has pushed a number of matches over to Day 4, including Rafael Jodar, Jelena Ostapenko, and Alex De Minaur.

Is this defeat at the US Open the one that forces Novak Djokovic to reconsider his end game? | Tumaini Carayol

The Serb has his heart set on defending his Olympic title in Los Angeles in 2028, but his ageing body is screaming a resounding ‘no’

The GuardianTumaini Carayol

• Round 1 started rather dramatically, with Novak Djokovic's slow and painful midnight exit on Day 1. The vomiting, the tears, the overheating, the energy collapse....what does it all mean? We'll see. Interestingly, he's on the entry list for the China Open, where he's a six-time champi0n with a 29-0 record.
• Aside from Novak's crash out, it's been relatively smooth sailing since, though AUUUGH ARTHUR – he goes 1-2 at the Slams this year and has still made it past the third round just once in his career:
  • Women's seeds out: [12] Belinda Bencic, [20] Maja Chwalinska, [27] Barbora Krejcikova, [28] Sara Bejlek

• Men's seeds out: [4] Novak Djokovic, [10] Arthur Fils, [29] Cameron Norrie, [30] Matteo Arnaldi

• Naomi Osaka unveiled her Allen Iverson inspired walk-out fit and went on to a scratchy first-round win. The rust was understandable, she hasn't played since making the Toronto semifinals. After the win, she says she had a tough talk with coach Tomasz Wiktorowski. I suspect we'll see a much sharper Naomi in Round 2. (The Athletic)

• There was a bit of conversation of about this on Bluesky – as accidentally instigated by me, I guess! – about Rennae Stubbs' observation on the World Feed that, as a coach, she wouldn't want to hear Naomi talk about her desire to show off more fashion looks in the tournament. In Stubbs' words, "Tennis comes first." Here's what I wrote:

Stubbs saying that Naomi shouldn't be thinking about wanting to show more outfits. "Tennis comes first".

But that *does* work for Naomi. She wanted to wear seven masks in 2020. And she did. She had the Lububus last year, made the semis. RG sparkly dress, Wimbledon kimono, career-best results.

This one is hardwired different and she's proven that. It's not cause/effect one way or another. She's inconsistent because she's inconsistent. Her game has very little margin. And yet she's playing the most consistent stretch of tennis she's ever played. All while inviting the attention.

Conventional wisdom doesn't apply to Naomi.

Just like conventional wisdome didn't – and still doesn't – apply to her idol.

idk maybe introverts are the only ones who can see her lol

• I don't think Stubbs said anything controversial, just like I don't think I'm saying anything controversial. It's an age-old debate that has been happening in this sport since Serena and Venus. But the "stick to sports" argument clearly didn't apply to Serena and Venus – 30 singles Grand Slam titles between them – and I just feel even more strongly that it doesn't apply to Naomi.
• Anyway, that was all just an excuse to dust this off:

• The men's draw had its own aura farming moment, thanks to the one and only Carlos Alcaraz. Dude played his first match since April and all of a sudden the timeline COULD NOT stop talking about...nipples? Man nipples?

• I was very confused about the discourse because...it's a man nipple. Why is everyone so hot and bothered? Do y'all just not go to the beach or the community pool anymore?
• Then I got this explanation from @spin4srv on Bluesky and I learned about the existence of "trailer park nip":

I don't think it's so much the nip itself.

I think the Nike shirt gets _sloppy_ after extended play and so it's giving trailer park nip, which is ... not something expected at the USO.

It's giving ... showing up for your court date in the wrong clothes...

• Fair enough! It's just nice to hear he's pain-free. (The Guardian)
• Venus Williams and Sofia Kenin got ping-ponged back and forth between courts in a post-midnight start and that should just never happen for all the reasons. (The Athletic)

• Your frequent reminder that Candi Gauff has the most aura in the Gauff family, trust me. (The Athletic)
• The highlights don't really do it justice, but Gauff-Sonmez was my favorite match of the first round. The net-rushing was so damn fun:

• And of course, no aura-farming compilation is complete without this 40-year-old Frenchman:

• Belinda Bencic looked in control of her match against Yulia Putintseva, before things went completely pear-shaped and she collapsed to a 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 loss.

• The match had the histrionics and drama that one would expect in a Bencic-Putintseva duel, and here's how Swiss press summed up one key moment (translated):

A sign of the high tension was the scene in the second set when, after breaking back to lead 2-1, Bencic hit the ball over the boards and lightly struck a spectator. At least, that's how it appeared. Unintentional, of course, but the 29-year-old was also aware that she was a bit lucky to escape with only a warning. And at that point, she was still leading 6-4, 2-1.

This is not the first time a Grand Slam event—or a tournament run by Craig Tiley, more specifically—has taken an official betting partner. Most recently, in 2016 the Australian Open brought on British bookmaker William Hill as its first official betting sponsor. That year’s tournament, as their luck would have it, was beset by scandals around betting, both after a BBC/BuzzFeed investigation into older stories of corruption dropped on the eve of the tournament, and my own report for The New York Times about suspicious betting patterns in an Australian Open mixed doubles match. (One of the players involved in my report, David Marrero, was later banned by the International Tennis Integrity Agency for two years and seven months for offering to pay for wild cards.)

William Hill’s ads did not return the next year, and the Grand Slam events did not dabble in further betting sponsors for nearly a decade.

Gambling addicts are struggling as Kalshi and Polymarket explode in the US: ‘You could be betting your rent away’

Experts warn that although prediction markets are not regulated as gambling platforms, they are just as addictive

The GuardianAlaina Demopoulos

• I said it last week and I'll say it again until I'm blue in the face: sports gambling should be an illegal seedy underground thing. If you want to put money on something, you should have to drive to Atlantic City or Vegas or whatever actual casino, and actually place your bet. Sports betting will always happen. So long as there's a bankrolled bookie with a baseball bat and a shmuck with nothing more than a hunch and a dream, this stuff is gonna happen. Fine, let it happen.
• But what you absolutely DO NOT HAVE TO DO, is remove alllllllllll the friction between a bettor and a bet. Between Draft Kings and Polymarket, the issue is that all this can be done on your phone, whether your courtside at a game, or lounging in your comfy tract home. And the way to remove the final barrier to legitimized and legal above-ground sports betting is to wash it clean of all its seedy underground stench. And how do you do that?

US Open Signs Exclusive Deal With Kalshi

The US Open reached the surprise deal with the prediction-market platform just ahead of this year’s main draw.

Front Office SportsBen Horney

• By paying a shitload of money to slap your name on respectable legacy brands and products. Because gosh, if a non-profit organization like the USTA – which has facilities and statues named after Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Louis Armstrong, and Althea Gibson – says sports betting is not only ok but it is SUPER DUPER AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD ALL DO IT, then....yeah, I guess I will!
• Fun fact: Polymarket, a Kalshi competitor, offered Twitch streamer Hasan Piker $1 Million (as a starting offer) to sponsor his election night stream in 2024. He turned it down. See? It's really not that hard!
• The other way that you sanitize yourself is by paying a shitload of money to hire former Obama advisors.

• If you want to read up on prediction markets and their foray into sports betting, Pablo Torre has been on it:

Baltimore sues Kalshi and Polymarket, calling prediction markets illegal sports betting

Baltimore City is suing prediction-market companies Kalshi and Polymarket, accusing them of using a legal loophole to offer sports betting in Maryland without complying with state gambling laws. The l…

Yahoo NewsChevall Pryce and Brian Carlton, The Baltimore Sun

• As Craig Tiley says, the US Open's "popularity" is a great problem to have. But it's still a problem. And it certainly feels that this year is the moment when the USTA's unabashed cash grabs and influencer-maxxing rubs up against the red line. Maybe. (Yahoo)

• This is a great feature on Michael Chang, who's on the verge of coaching Learner Tien to become the highest-ranked Asian American since....Michael Chang. (NY Mag)

Tien is very cerebral, Chang says — a quality he appreciates, “because I’m the same way.” There are core spiritual tenets that bond them — joy, trust, radical acceptance — but there is also Chang’s use of forensic kinesiology to bring out the best in his player. “He leaves no stone unturned in terms of however small of a thing it might be,” said Tien. “If it gives me even a 0.001 percent chance more of winning, he’ll make it happen. And as I’ve worked with him, he’s gone above and beyond just to make sure I have the best chance of succeeding.” Broadcast footage shows that Chang watches his student with the visible intensity of a father at his child’s soccer game.

• Gosh, people are REALLY high on Ben Shelton right now, huh? I go back and forth as to whether the hype is organic or juiced. (Vanity Fair)

And there’s that It factor: Shelton’s intrinsic star quality has started to carry his persona beyond the baseline. He’s dating Trinity Rodman, the US Women’s National Team soccer star and Olympic gold medalist (and daughter of Dennis Rodman). He sits courtside at NBA games. He counts a personal Instagram audience of 1.3 million people (only about a dozen professional men’s tennis players have a following of 1 million or more).

• She lost to Elena Rybakina, but this was a cool story: Thea Frodin, who played Serena's double in King Richard, played the main draw. (AP)

• If you're in New York and want in on the impeccable Swaggapino vibes, please go to Little Manila and crush some delicious foods for me. (US Open)

No, we’re not suggesting a Duolingo course, but a few tennis-specific phrases will go a long way. Try “laban” (literally, "fight") the Tagalog equivalent to the Italian “forza.” Alternatively, “let’s go” is “tara!” or “tara na!” (“na,” which adds urgency, translates to “now”). A Little Manila shop owner who claims to have lipread Eala’s on-court utterances says she favors phrases like "isa pa" ("one more").

• Slate's Josh Levin gives us his view of the Alex Eala phenomenon, which will surely hit a crescendo when she returns home to Manila in December. As Josh points out, the Eala Effect is very, very real. Can tennis pull the stick out of its own butt and embrace the much-needed energy and enthusiasm the Swaggapinos bring? IT BETTER.

Before the year is out, tennis’s single-match attendance record is likely getting smashed. In December, an adoring crowd will pack into the 55,000-seat Philippine Arena to cheer on their countrywoman Alex Eala. If all goes to plan that day, the 21-year-old Filipina (and her opponent, Indonesia’s Janice Tjen) will outdraw the sport’s previous top attractions, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. In February 2020, those internationally beloved rivals played a charity exhibition in South Africa in front of 51,954 people. (The opening act that day, a doubles match that also featured Bill Gates and Trevor Noah, surely lured 10 or 11 of those paying customers.) Yes, Eala has zero senior-level major championship titles compared to 42 combined for Federer and Nadal. But at this point in her ascendant career, she could probably sell out the Circus Maximus (estimated capacity: 250,000) so long as it got teleported from ancient Rome to anywhere within shouting distance of Manila.

Alexandra Eala Is the Pride of the Philippines and Tennis’s Next Great Superstar

Eala mania has taken the sport by storm, with her Filipino fan base poised to blanket New York for the U.S. Open.

Sports IllustratedJon Wertheim

• Speaking of Swaggapinos, shoutout the San Francisco Pen Show, which I had the pleasure of attending for three days last weekend. There's a big Filipino presence in the pen/stationary community and they're just super amazing. I'll do a full rundown of the whole thing in another post once I've recovered. It was fun but also incredibly overstimulating and I'm still completely discombobulated.
• If anyone wants a dose of nostalgia: Terminator 2 is coming back to cinemas on Wednesday. I can't wait to see Robert Patrick's T-2000 again on the big screen. I can't believe it's been 35 years. (Fandango)

• H/t Discord Harlan: What do booksellers make of the end of reading? (Defector)
• Counterprogramming: Here is Iga Swiatek's book report on Ian McEwan's "What We Can Know". She put in a really sharp opening round performance. Still playing with good rally discipline and shape. (Instagram)
• Bop of the Day: Of everything I watched over the last three days, nothing comes close to even touching the peak athleticism and skill shown by Kelly Clarkson's Kellyoke of the notoriously impossible "Golden":

• Bonus: She also did one of my favorites, "Sober", and GODDAMN KELLY: