ATP

Bagel Sandwich: Holy CRAP it's December

How did we get here?

Courtney Nguyen

Courtney Nguyen

— 10 min read
Bagel Sandwich: Holy CRAP it's December
Photo by Z Graphica / Unsplash

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: Everything is everything.

  • Let the reflections and countdowns begin!
    • The Body Serve were quick on it. Here's their 2025 WTA Recap, which is top-notch as always:

iga fans comprise 80% of the rodpod audience lol

  • I acknowledge that I am an absolute outlier when it comes to answering the age-old-get-drunk-at-the-bar-and-yell-at-your-friends question of "What makes a great tennis match?" I'm not really all that interested in context or stakes. So I completely agree with Andy here that "Best Match" is totally different from "Best Performance" and both lists are necessary. A great match to me is one that entertains. It doesn't have to be high quality. It doesn't have to be high-stakes. And because of all that variability – because what one person finds entertaining is not what someone else does – I think these BEST MATCH lists really should be wildly different from person to person. I think it's weird when there's "consensus"! If 80% of people agree that a single match was the BEST MATCH, I say YOU ARE LIARS! /endrant
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unc left 2019 to traumatize the people

“I would like to try missing maybe two tournaments – maybe the ones I feel I haven’t been playing well at anyway – just spending this time on grinding and getting the technique better,” she says. “I think it will help me also play a little bit better under stress, because my body will remember the proper movements and what it learned during this practice time."
  • You know another reason why I fucking hate AI? Because I saw this incredible Lego build of Centre Court that is just so absolutely mindblowing that I actually had to stop myself and wonder if it was real. Because if you aren't familiar with Legos and MOCs (My Own Creation), you might not understand just how hard this build had to have been! Identifying and sourcing all the bricks, the minifigs, building alllll those minifigs, and then engineering the incredible details? UNREAL. (Reddit)
  • This summer, I was in an awesome movie memorabilia shop in Toronto when the owner asked me if there was anything specific I would be interesting. After striking out with a request for a very specific poster from "In The Mood For Love" and "Chungking Express", I casually dropped a longshot: "Do you have the original poster for Mallrats? The one that's like a comic book cover?" Low and behold he did. Best $100 I spent all year, and it just so happens to be – which I didn't know at the time – the 30th Anniversary of one of the best comedies of the 90s. (The Ringer)

i still yell "it's a schooner" all the time

  • “Ms. Li concedes she may be the stupidest person in the room.” Here is a true crime write-up about a couple of colossally dumb as rocks terrible people. Also, if someone called me to ask me to borrow my SIM card I'd absolutely decline and not let them come near me ever again.(Toronto Life)
  • This is a very sobering look at what trade with China might look like and it's pretty consistent with the vibes and what I saw/heard when I was there last month. (Financial Times)
  • "If listening and watching have in large part replaced reading, so talking has mostly finished off writing." This is a damn good recounting of the evolution of podcasts and how we got to this "TOO MANY PODCASTS" moment. (The Baffler)

Oh my god. She's 1000% right. This makes so much sense. (Credit: Saradoesbookstuff on insta)

— Shane Anderson 🏳️‍🌈 (@shaneanderson.bsky.social) 2025-11-28T04:12:31.731Z

GET OFF THE PHONES AND YELL AT PEOPLE TO GET OFF THEIR PHONES

  • See you in the main draw: Zarina Diyas and Bu Yunchaokete won the Australian Open's Asia-Pacific Wildcard Playoff. For the USTA reciprocal, Elizabeth Mandlik and Patrick Kypson won the Australian Open Wildcard Challenge.
  • "In 2020, she was deeply wounded by the spectacle of McEnroe and Navratilova’s appeal for her to be disavowed, saying she would never call for somebody’s name to be stripped from an arena because of a personal disagreement." (The Telegraph)
  • Ma'am, you boycotted Qantas over its support of same-sex marriage, and you wrote an op-ed piece in the newspaper singling out Casey Dellacqua's family and children, and you've given countless interviews and public appearances proclaiming the LGBTQ+ community are a corrupting force in society. But sorry you felt "deeply wounded" a couple of people didn't want your name on a piece of c0ncrete.
  • Also, pfft that headline...this is what happens when all y'all thought it was cute to define GOAT by ONE SINGULAR NUMBER.

in this house we stan and protect cousin casey

"The bonus pool consists of three vehicles. One rewards the top 30 players in Masters 1000 events and the Nitto ATP Finals, the other pays the top six players in ATP 500 events (an incentive designed to attract more elite players to those second-tier events), and the third is a profit-sharing plan for all.
"We’ll get into the nitty gritty details below, but the salient point is that the bonus pool is the powerful engine under the shiny hood of men’s tennis. It isn’t publicized partly because tennis has always taken pride in being a sport of free-range operators who, rather like gunslingers, ride into town to take part in round-by-round, last-man standing shootouts for enormous prizes.
"However, guaranteed income has slowly seeped into tennis in various ways as the tour has sought critically important stability and the ability to deliver what it promises to tournament promoters. The players have been party to this, willing to accept the strings attached to the bonus pool."
  • Borna Coric has undergone shoulder surgery. (Instagram)
  • Cam Norrie and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova are engaged – NO NO NO NO NO NOT TO EACH OTHER SORRYSORRYSORRY.
  • VIVA LA REVOLUCION! Carmel, California is looking into banning pickleball because, as is completely obvious to LITERALLY EVERYONE, it sounds like shit. (KSBW.com)
  • Yep, I agree with Gil Gross' take here. The idea that shortening the season or increasing prize money or whittling down the schedule will mean players won't play any exo they're offered is hilarious. That's totally fine, just don't bother making that argument because I will assume you're a child:

money money money

  • The outgoing Dutch Foreign Minister would prefer if Tallon Griekspoor did not play the upcoming exhibition in St. Petersburg, Russia.
  • Some fun BTS footage from Rafa's retirement ceremony here:
  • Please respectfully enjoy Sebastian Stan speaking Romanian:

respectfully, i said!

  • THIS IS CORRECT:
  • Do I spend a lot of my time thinking about AI? I think it's pretty clear the answer is DUH. (Where's Your Ed At via Substack)
In simpler terms, 35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six companies buying GPUs. If NVIDIA's growth story stumbles, it will reverberate through the rest of the Magnificent 7, making them rely on their own AI trade stories.
And, as you will shortly find out, there is no AI trade, because generative AI is not making anybody any money.
  • I had a cousin ask me why I'm so obsessed with it – specifically, destroying it – and it's not even about AI itself, though obviously it has absurd environmental impact. It's also creating a very obvious tech bubble that could result in the biggest financial failure since Enron. But that's not the stuff that I think about. Although this primer on NVIDIA is outstanding.

be on the right side.

  • What I spend my time thinking about is how AI is breaking humanity. It's revealing the most asinine impulses of clout-chasing humans, people who would rather tell an AI prompt to create a photo of them walking through a museum as opposed to just being a person who ACTUALLY WALKS THROUGH A MUSEUM. I worry that it's creating young people who don't know how to do basic things – write emails, write essays, research topics, play music instruments – and even worse, they either don't care or THEY LITERALLY DO THINK THEY KNOW HOW TO DO THOSE THINGS BECAUSE THEY CAN WRITE A PROMPT. I'm scared that people really do think that the output is the point, that the reason we love Studio Ghibli movies is because they look cute. Or the reason art is art is because it looks nice. Or that good writing is perfect grammar. Or that good music sounds good. No, no, no, no.
  • Put more simply (maybe?): I'm scared that people are so scared of failing that they're willing to sell their souls. And that really, really, genuinely saddens me. I though we all knew that the beauty is in the imperfections, in the striving, in the human effort.
  • ANYWAY. IT REALLY PISSES ME OFF.
  • Life Update: I'm enlisting in the army tomorrow:

MY CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN

  • THIS: "We used to realize we were bad at something and just move on with our lives." (Twitter)
  • Thanks to everyone who's been in on the Twitch streams last week. I had fun catching up and talking nonsense! More coming this upcoming week. Join the Discord or follow me on Twitch for notifications.
  • I meant to get this post up last night, but I got distracted – SHOCKER – and started organizing my record collection – DANGER – and in the course of it I came to discover I had two copies of Jeff Buckley's "Grace". First of all, LUCKY ME!!!! SUCH RICHES AND WEALTH!!! Second of all, I don't need two copies of one of my favorite and self-defining albums of my life. So I was deciding which one I was going to try and sell off, and in the course of that research I have come to learn that the copy that I thought was just some basic, generic pressing that would get no more than 10 bucks was in fact NOT THAT. This is the closest I will ever come to hitting the jackpot and I'm fine with it! Anyway, take us out, Jeff:

weep.

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