Desert Bagel: Notes on a Scandal

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: The balls are floofy.
• Owen Lewis recounts how an attempt to write a story about American athletes and American politics led to him becoming the target of a right-wing harassment campaign. (Defector)
• This is an important read for everyone because as we are inundated more and more with absolute media trash, we all have to be vigilant in sifting through the mire and also keeping our heads. And trust me, I am admonishing you as much as I am admonishing myself. See, when Owen got clipped for the Coco question, I definitely posted a snide message on Bluesky. Only later did I find out it was Owen asking the question, which made me realize that he was working on a deeper story. I felt like an absolute ass, so I immediately emailed him to apologize. I felt horrible and stupid. I should have known better. But that's the trap that's been set for all of us when 95% of the crap we see is aggregated out-of-context clip-farming. And being irresponsible about consuming all that stuff hurts the people who are actually doing the work. Again, sorry Owen.
• It's important for people to understand how the sausage is made. Most of it is common sense, but here's a less-charged and lower-stakes example from this week: On Media Day at Indian Wells, I asked Coco and Iga if they had followed the Olympics and if there were any performances/results/quotes that stood out to them. I asked them this is a public press conference because it's a light frivolous question and not worth using relationship capital to secure a one-on-one for a pithy question. I was hoping that they'd shout out Alysa Liu or Eileen Gu – cuz, SEO – but asked a very open-ended question, and sure enough, that's what I got from them. The minute they said it, I knew the quotes were going to go everywhere and I don't have a problem with that. I know what the deal is. But I rushed back to my desk and threw together a quick post on the blog and pushed it out via newsletter and Bluesky.

• I was curious to see if people would picked it up and attribute/link back. Outlets obviously don't have to – if they have access to the press conference transcript, which drops almost immediately – then they could get the quotes themselves and write an article without attribution. That's totally fair! If it's a public pool of quotes, you don't have to attribute. If you saw a tweet or article that alerted you to the existence of the quote or piece of news and then go do the legwork to track it down yourself, you also don't have to attribute (though a h/t is always a classy thing to do – manners maketh the man, as they say). Similarly, if you were in the room when it happened, it's always classy but not necessary to shoutout the reporter who got the quote, especially when the question was not a run of the mill question that anyone would have asked had they been called on. You guys get the logic of these unwritten rules/guidelines, right? Like, it makes sense!

• Yet even though I absolutely know how all this works and everything went exactly as I expected it to – quotes went everywhere, no h/t or acknowledgement anywhere – it's still hard not to feel the human feelings. Every tennis beat reporter knows this feeling because we feel it every day. You're the one putting yourself on the line with a player (and now that pressers go on YouTube or are aired, on the line with the public) — and incurring the cost and risk of making these trips to be in the room to ask the question – and those sitting at home bearing absolutely zero risk at all, blast your work out to the world before you've even walked back from the press room and sat down at your desk. And then you have editors or bosses wondering why they should even pay the money to send you when anyone with an internet connection can beat you to your own quotes. Oh and then there's the whole being yelled at by the internet because they thought your question was stupid or rude or you didn't ask it in the deferential manner fitting their favorite player. I've been doing this for 15 years and that feeling never stops feeling gross and kinda sad. It all forces you to become hardened in a way that I truly hate. There's nothing we can do about it, but maybe if the people who ingest tennis content could be more mindful, thoughtful, and self-policing, maybe that will make a difference. It will always be bad, but it doesn't have to be THIS bad. This cynical world has forged us into cynical people, and I know that I am being a big-hearted, earnest pollyanna about this. But I refuse to give up. I'll keep shouting into the void until I'm hoarse. Say no to slop.

• Pay attention to bylines, elevate the writers you trust, celebrate the work that you enjoy. Allow more friction in your life. Yes a clip or an aggregator article might be an easy way to get information, but maybe take a few extra steps to find the actual source material? Because let me tell you, as someone who sifts through hundreds of links to put these Bagels together and tries to do that sourcing for you, I cannot even tell you how many times in the course of sourcing to find the original link, it becomes abundantly clear that the initial thing I read was either misleading, wrong, or completely made up. Sourcing will protect you.

• And while I'm on this soapbox, you should always – ALWAYS – side-eye any account that pulls quotes or screengrabs articles and then does not put the source link IN THE PARENT TWEET as a matter of course. That is the sign of a clout-chaser and that is a red flag. I don't care that they put the link in a second tweet. They are doing that because of Twitter's algorithm, which suppresses links. So they want all the clout of stealing a writer's stuff without the penalty imposed by Twitter. The result? The only one bearing the cost of the penalty is THE WRITER/OUTLET. That's some bad faith bullshit.

• Tennis Channel has been added to Amazon's Prime Video Channels. (Awful Announcing)
• Shireen Ahmed's reflection on the state of hockey media is worth your time. (CBC.ca)
• Bianca Andreescu lost in the first round of Indian Wells, but she's had resurgent four weeks after deciding to the Agassi route and play on the ITF Circuit. That takes a lot of guts and Bibi's never been short of that. (Tennis.com)

“I think what’s amazing is I finally got some match rhythm, which I haven’t had over the last few years. I got as many matches as I dd in those three weeks, like all of last year.”

• Doug Robson catches up with Hailey Baptiste, who is quietly putting together a breakout season. (USOpen.org)

She realizes that her kick serve jumps higher, her slice stays low, and her natural variety is a weapon here. Managing those skills in often changeable conditions is part of learning the ins and outs of the tour, and she acknowledges those nuances increasingly work in her favor.

The more meaningful progress has come internally.

“I’m stronger mentally,” she says. “My focus is better, and my emotions are a little more under control. Within my game, I have more structure, and I know my court identity better.”

• Did you know there's a SECOND mixed-doubles event at Indian Wells? I did not! But yes, there's a mixed-doubles event starting next week. (Front Office Sports)

• Know your history: Nice long read on Larry Stefanki (former coach of Andy Roddick) and his upset win at the tournament that would become the BNP Paribas Open. (Palm Springs Life)

• Sorry in advance: I'm one of the talking heads on this multi-part podcast series hosted by Cari Champion on THE Greatest Rivalry in Sports: Martina & Chrissie. The first three episodes have dropped:

• Russell Fuller spoke to Emma Raducanu ahead of Indian Wells and she isn't against having a coach but she also doesn't want to be told what to do. So I'm not sure where that leaves us haha. (BBC)

• Anecdotally, players and coaches have definitely noticed the courts do not seem as slow as in year's past. Assuming these metrics are right, wow:

• Food for thought, though not an original bite of food: We have seen homogenization hit tennis in various ways over the last 10 years. What used to be a sport with remarkable variance and variability from week to week, every decision in recent years has been designed to make everything the same. Let's take everything that is unique and interesting about a given tournament and let's take that away so that everything is just a perfectly delicious vanilla. Is this good for business? Well, in the short-term I would say yes, because there's no way these decisions would be made if people weren't profitting from them. Of course, a lot of this has been pushed by the players, who understandably want more predictability. But man, one of the things I truly loved about Indian Wells was the absolute whackadoodle combination of a slow gritty court, thin desert air, and impossible to control balls. Yes, let's have a lightning quick hard court in Cincinnati! Fast grass! Slow clay! These are good things! But no, now everything's like, medium. The Sunshine Double used to be a unique month of tennis. Now it's one of many extended Masters/1000s, all with the same draw size, same format. Like, are we ok with this? Do we like this? We gotta think about this.

• Novak is onboard with a Serena comeback. Old people need community! (AFP via Yahoo)
• Matt Futterman looks back on Serena and Venus' Indian Wells boycott. (The Athletic)

Up in the broadcast booth, commentator Mary Carillo sat with her earpiece in, ready to call the match. This was the buzziest tennis news in a long time. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say.

“Back when I used to call the Sunshine Swing, I’d always had it in my head that Serena went out of her way to win the Miami tournament that followed Indian Wells just to stick it to those b——s on the other coast,” Carillo wrote in a text message this week.

“The hype hysteria was bucking around like a noisy, unbalanced washing machine. I felt the opposite — pensive, contemplative. It turned out that Serena felt that way, too. Until she heard the roar and saw the standing ovation. And it just kept coming.”

Serena got choked up, too, then collected herself and went to the net. Fans screamed away, desperate for an acknowledgement.

“I was getting paid to call the match, but I still hadn’t said a word,” Carillo said.

• This is so many immigrant kids trying to walk you through why there are multiple pronunciations of our names, no you're not going to say it "right", and yes, that's for the most part fine:

Bop of the Day: Trippin' n' hoppin'.