Bagel Bites: Vibe Shift

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 wrote about The Third Men.
• Also a correction: I stupidly wrote that The Field has prevented a Sincaraz final in 2 of 3 tournaments this year and that was absolutely incorrect because OBVIOUSLY they did not play each other in Melbourne, which for some reason I thought they did. So AKSHULY, now that Carlos is out of Miami, The Field is actually 4 for 4 – Australian Open, Doha, Indian Wells, and Miami. I mean, one of the two has won them all so far (Miami pending), but, you know, wins are wins!

• It's the split everyone probably saw coming: Iga Swiatek has ended things with Wim Fissette. (The Athletic)
• We'll need some distance to get an honest post-mortem on their 18-month run, one that began on the heels of Iga's failed doping test soared with her unexpected Wimbledon title, but was otherwise marred by a dip in form that was both undeniable and undiagnosable. That their partnership never truly seemed to click remains a head-scratcher, and the sense I got was even until the very end, these two wanted so desperately for this to work. I think they both have genuine respect and appreciation for each other. No word on what comes next for either, though I doubt Wim will have any problems getting a new gig should he want one. As for Iga, she's asked for patience. (Instagram)
• Related: Does anyone have Andrea Petkovic's cell number? Asking for a former No.1. Just kidding. Kinda.
• Pretty impressive work from Sebastian Korda to knock off Carlos Alcaraz in the third round of Miami, not for the result itself, but for bouncing back from an absolute choke-job serving out the win in the second set, to being ice-cold when he got a second chance to do so in the third. He went out in the next round to Martin Landaluce, where he had a match point – saved by a Landaluce return – and seemed to suffer a back injury. Health is always going to be Korda's challenge, huh? (ATP)
• Todd Spiker recaps a very wet first week at the Miami Open. (WTA Backspin)

• Terence Atmane remains a fascinating and wacky dude (complimentary). (ATP)

“[I thought about] how interesting it is to see that the solar system is not what we think. It's not just some random planets doing some cycles around each other. It’s a whole movement. It's a trajectory,” Atmane said. “The Earth is going really fast through space, so that was really interesting to get to know because I didn’t know it. I thought that everything was kind of in the same place, but it's totally not true, and that's where I started to be really interested.”

• Not unrelated:

Ryan getting interviewed by an astrophysicist and getting asked space related questions😭😭😭
“Would you be able to explain relativity and time dilation to me?”
“Not to you, no, why would I do that?” pic.twitter.com/Tg8wCdMosb

— clare (@youngntragic) March 22, 2026

• Here's where the women's tournament is at as I click send:

• Frances Tiafoe saved two match points to end Jakub Mensik's title defense. (ATP)

At the Miami Open, Frances Tiafoe and Hailey Baptiste follow tennis’ zigs and zags

A good day for the Florida transplants. A really good day for a Washington, D.C.-area tennis center. And an even better day for a couple of players who have learned the hard way that tennis careers usually resemble the zig-zag contours of a heart-rate monitor, rather than a smooth, rising arc. Such are the fates of Frances Tiafoe and Hailey Baptiste, who grew up four years apart on the hard courts of the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md. and make Florida their training

Yahoo SportsMatthew Futterman

• Y'all, we're having the absolute WRONG conversation about this. The reason women shouldn't have to play Best of Five is because NO ONE SHOULD BE PLAYING BEST OF FIVE. Why are all the questions about the women and Best of Five and not the men and Best of Three! Isn't THAT a concept at least worth interrogating? The conversation around universal BO5 is dumb as hell because IT IS LITERALLY A PRACTICAL IMPOSSIBILITY. YOU ARE ALL HAVING A DUMB DEBATE ABOUT A THING THAT CANNOT HAPPEN. Please for FIVE SECONDS do the math about what a daily tennis schedule would look like at the Grand Slams if EVERYONE WAS PLAYING BEST OF FIVE.
• AUGH I'M LOSING MY VOICE YELLING ABOUT THIS PLEASE CAN YOU JUST TAKE OVER JESSICA PEGULA AT INDIAN WELLS:

Q. Given your involvement in the inner workings of the WTA, what are your thoughts on the idea of women playing best-of-five sets? Do you think it is feasible to introduce that quickly, or is it something that has to be planned for maybe 10 years in the future to allow new players to train for that and to be used to it by the time they're playing in slams

JESSICA PEGULA: I mean, again, I said before I don't really think we should have to. I'm honestly just not a massive fan of the three out of five, even with the men. And even though I know that there have been amazing three-out-of-five matches, I do think in three-out-of-five matches there is also a lot of those where guys throw sets because they're tired. If they get down a break, they tend to throw the set to get reset for the third set or the fourth set, whatever it is. They have told me that before. They have to reserve their energy in different ways. You're definitely managing your energy much different, from at least what I have been told from the guys, than you do two out of three.

So I think that's something. I think we have amazing female athletes that honestly I think we could do that. I don't think it's the fact that we can't; I just don't necessarily think that we should.

Just on that aspect, I don't even know how you would schedule tournaments. We'd have to add weeks. We can't even get through the schedule now (smiling). So I'm not really sure for like a fan experience how that would really work.

Would you really want to sit three out of five of a woman's match, possibly go five, and then another five for a men's match that you really wanted to see? I mean, that's like ten hours of tennis, maybe not that long, but a lot of tennis sitting there as a fan. I don't really know if that experience would be enjoyable.

There is a lot of other variables that I don't think sometimes people are thinking about, or maybe a fan doesn't realize, because it would be a massive change. I don't think it's that we're not capable. I just don't really know if that's the best thing for the sport.

The only thing I could think of is like a quarterfinal on, maybe it switches to a three out of five. I don't know if the men would necessarily go to that, though, because obviously it would be a change for them. I also don't think a lot of men would want to wait for a three-out-of-five woman's match all of a sudden to have to play a three-out-of-five match, especially when you have back-to-back night matches, you have long days, if a court is moving really slow. All of a sudden that's another thing that has to get thrown into the equation.

There is a lot of moving parts. I think it would – I don't think it would take that long to implement as far as us being ready to play. I just think that there is so many moving parts to it that it would definitely take a lot of consultation with the players, because it would be affect many different aspects of our sport.

• I spent a lot of time trying to find the quote from Roger Federer, who when asked about the men playing Best of 3 at the Slams said – and this is purely off my recollection – that he would be fine with it but then Slams would get pretty boring because you really don't need the off day for recovery. Which, ok! At least that's an interesting debate to continue!
• I've ranted about this privately many times so I apologize to the 95% of you who are reading this because you're subscribed purely out of friendship but, what if it's just Best of 3 at the Slams for everyone and that would then encourage top male singles players to play doubles? Wouldn't that, possibly, create a BETTER overall product? How amazing would it have been back in the day to not only get, at most, seven chances to see Roger, Rafa, or Novak – or for some of us, SIR ANDY MURRAY – and instead get like 10+? Think of all the hype and hoopla when Serena played doubles or mixed. If we decrease the singles load for the men, maybe (and I really don't know, I'm just hypothesizing) the Grand Slam product is better. I don't know! But that's at least an interesting conversation to continue.
• AND ALSO – are we really arguing against doing LESS work for the same pay? In THIS economy??? Work smarter, not harder, boys.

• Oh so I guess we're just doing Pivot to Video again. Because that totally worked the last time. (Awful Announcing)

How Facebook’s Chaotic Push Into Video Cost Hundreds of Journalists Their Jobs

As media companies tried to divine the desires of the world’s biggest platform, they fired writers and lost their way.

The AtlanticAlexis C. Madrigal, Robinson Meyer

Facebook Artificially Inflated their Video Numbers, Leading News Organizations to Fire Journalists in a Pivot to Video

Paste Magazine is your source for the best music, movies, TV, comedy, videogames, books, comics, craft beer, politics and more. Discover your favorite albums and films.

Paste MagazineJacob Weindling

What “Pivoting to Video” Really Means

A recent round of layoffs raises grim questions about the future of digital media. Is the landscape changing or is this the same old corporate maneuvering?

The Ringer

• This is a very fair take on the whole influencer vs. journalist debate that was sparked by a stupid moment on the Oscars red carpet last week. (Fast Company)

The moment has received residual backlash this week—not only for Shane’s flippant remarks, but for what it might indicate about the current state of entertainment journalism and where it’s headed. It raises the question of why media outlets keep hiring internet personalities to do jobs typically done by journalists.

As the media industry is laying off professional journalists en masse, a new kind of landscape and interview style is emerging. In many instances, journalists are no longer steering the conversation. Instead, we now have what I’ve been calling “besties journalism,” wherein big influencers who’ve made a name for themselves turn an interview with a notable figure into a gabfest.

• Influencers and content creators get defensive because it sounds like – and maybe often times it is – journalists don't want them in their spaces. And yes, maybe sometimes that is true. BUT the core of the pushback is not that influencers/ccs are crowding the shared spaces, it's that they are crowding OUT those spaces. They are being welcomed in at the expense of journalists, who are losing jobs at a seemingly record pace to make room for them, people who do not engage in the craft and work of journalism. No one's saying you can't have memes and viral clips and heehee haha nonsense. But that funtime content should be IN ADDITION to, not AT THE EXPENSE OF journalism. And if you don't see the follow-on effect of what happens when there are no journalists doing the work, then you have a baby brain and no one should take your thoughts on this seriously.

Why Are All Pop Star Interviews Like That?

Thoughts on Jake Shane and the stanification of media

Gen ZeroTobias Hess

• Jonathan Tannenwald is 100 percent right here. I've literally been on both sides, first when I was a contributor at SI.com (independent) and then when I was hired by the WTA (very dependent!). The tennis media ecosystem is so incredibly skewed towards non-independent media right now and with every week we're watching TPTB chip away independent media access.
• Players have four mandatory press responsibilities after matches, if they are requested: World Feed (tour interview), Host Broadcaster (e.g. Tennis Channel), Native rights-holder (player's home broadcaster, e.g. Canal+ for Iga, Sky Sports for Jack and Emma), and press conference. Anything outside of that is negotiated/declinable. Of those four, the press conference is the one that has the highest chance of being less of a fun time, mainly because the players have less leverage over the writers. If a rights-holder or broadcaster pisses off a player, that's just bad business. World Feed is designed to be generic post-match questions in English and native language. With the press conferences, they have to be there and we're allowed to ask what we want. In theory. We obviously have seen instances where that theory is thrown out the window.

Sinner surpasses Djokovic’s Masters 1000 record

Jannik Sinner surpasses Novak Djokovic’s 10-year record for consecutive sets won at ATP Masters 1000 events in his Miami Open win over Corentin Moutet.

Yahoo SportsHarry Poole - BBC Sport journalist

• So when Jannik made his "humorous" quip about hating press conferences, I laughed because, on one hand, sure, I get it, and you're also just trying to make a funny. But then I thought, wait, are press conferences the most uncomfortable space now for not just Jannik, but any tennis player, because it's the only space that isn't (theoretically) controlled or friendly? (TennisNow)

• A year after ELC was introduced, video review is coming to six courts at Wimbledon this summer. (BBC)

• Bobby Riggs' grandson was sentenced to 20 years for child sex abuse. (NBC Miami)
• This is a crushing essay from Amanda Peet: Both of my parents were in hospice, on opposite coasts. Then I found out that I had breast cancer. (The Atlantic)

The idea that she was still in there but couldn’t communicate gnawed at me. I thought of Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich and how badly he wanted his family to stop pretending that he was anything but doomed. I never told my mom that she was in hospice or used that word in her presence. Whenever the nurses came, I told her that they were wound-care specialists. I never asked her if she knew that she was dying, or if she was scared. I was like Ilyich’s wife, chirping about bullshit while he lay terror-stricken. I would drop by her cottage and try to perk her up with some dessert or a few sips of wine, but my visits were never more than flybys.

That Labor Day weekend, though, I found myself unable to visit her cottage at all. I didn’t have the space in my brain for both her disease and mine. I caught myself thinking of her as subhuman—too far gone to feel my absence, to feel anything at all. I was riddled with guilt, but I told myself it was just until Tuesday, when I would speak to Dr. K. It occurs to me, looking back, that I abandoned her because of the narcissism of small differences; friends always said that we were uncannily similar, in looks and temperament. I couldn’t bear to see her until I knew that I wasn’t going to die right along with her.

• McKay Coppins is having quite the run:

“I felt that one of the only ways to break through in media in this era was to break so much news that you become indispensable to an audience,” Ms. Drummond said of her pitch to Ms. Wintour for a Wired made newly relevant.

“I worked at so many start-ups that don’t exist anymore,” she added. “I wake up every day really obsessively chasing this goal of being able to do journalism with integrity, to publish news and to do it in a way that’s sustainable.”

• Not at all my personal cup of tea but if Collins vs. Moutet is yours that's fine too. I like Danielle a lot but when she gets into her "mean mode" it just always feels like she's punching down and I just don't vibe with that ever. (Twitter)
• How nice would it be to wake up in America and this was what our news looked like:

• "Quadruple amputee cornhole professional jailed on murder charges" is a headline I will click. I remain...confused? (The Athletic)

• Taking a quick moment to shout out the Criterion 24/7 Channel. Today I stumbled on WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM (1984) and I'm glad I did.
• Similarly, we don't openly and loudly appreciate Turner Classic Movies enough, and if you live with your parents, I'd highly recommend making sure they have access to it. I was watching AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951), which I had never seen, and my mom sat down and watched it with me, and then stuck around for the next one WATERLOO BRIDGE (1940), which stars her fave Vivien Leigh. I've never seen my mom watch back-to-back movies before and she was locked in to both. I loved it.

• AND WHILE WE'RE HERE, can we just give a shoutout to just turning on the TV and watching whatever's on? On demand streaming is breaking us, man. The hotel at Indian Wells had like, two HBOs, TNT, AMC, and SYFY and it was great to just come back from a long day and watchin the last halves of THE GODFATHER, CASINO, BASIC INSTINCT, THE DEPARTED, A FEW GOOD MEN, THE SCORE, and like...three Harry Potters.

• And no, your eyes did not deceive you: Yes, there are 8 men's singles matches and 2 women's singles matches today, Tuesday, in Miami.

• Bop of the Day: The Sound of Spring.