Desert Bagel: Is it in you?

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• Previously on The Bagel: This was my decision, to live free and die young.

• Jannik Sinner and Joao Fonseca played one of the most exciting and exhilarating two-set matches you'll ever see. If you have a chance to queue up the whole thing, please do give it a rewatch. And this is coming from someone who has been pretty bearish about Fonseca in the midst of all the hype. Consider me changed. That was some absolutely absurd stuff from the 19-year-old Brazilian. (ATP)

Joao Fonseca Takes Jannik Sinner To The Limit, And Justifies The Hype | Defector

Nineteen-year-old Joao Fonseca is a generational talent. Or an imminent bust—you tell me. His scant tenure on the men’s tennis tour has served as a case study in the lunacy of early-career cycles of hype and disappointment. What’s clear is where he stands right at this moment, after a spine-tingling 7-6(6), 7-6(4) loss to Jannik…

DefectorGiri Nathan

Q. What do you think is the best quality of Joao?

JANNIK SINNER: Well, I think he is fearless. He likes to go for shots. He is very aggressive. Has a great mentality.

You know, I feel like he's, as I said, in really good hands with his team. They are having very positive approach, you know, of tennis, which this is very important for especially young players.

I don't know him very well off the court, but he seems like a very humble kid, humble player. Yeah, for sure he's gonna be very, very tough to beat. He's already very tough to beat, but even in the future, even more so.

It's good. It's good for the sport. It's definitely good for the sport having him, having Learner also, very consistent, incredible players. It's good.

• How do you say "BIG BABE TENNIS" in Portuguese/Italian?

• While Fonseca was exchanging haymakers with Sinner, Victoria Mboko was just casually running through Amanda Anisimova on Stadium 2, winning 6-4, 6-1 in a match that was not as close as that scoreline which is not even a close scoreline. She's now on a three-match win streak vs. Top 10, after beating Mirra Andreeva and Elena Rybakina in her run to the Doha final last month.

• The win earns the 19-year-old Canadian a quarterfinal spot in her Indian Wells debut, where she'll face No.1 Aryna Sabalenka for a second time this year. The two played at the Australian Open, where Mboko came awfully close to forcing a third set, losing in a second-set tiebreak.

Q. You started 2025 outside the top 300. Now obviously you are in the top 10. I looked into it. Coco took a little bit longer to make that big jump. Mirra, as well. Does it feel fast to you how quickly the last year and a half has kind of been? What has been the key to not letting it get overwhelming?

VICTORIA MBOKO: Well, yeah, I mean, I will agree everything came super fast, but I just think, I mean, I just think if you put a lot of pressure on yourself and have a lot of expectations for yourself, you're not really going to perform the way you want to.

So I just try to come to terms that with every tournament I play, it's not going to be maybe the way I want it to, but I just want to give 100% effort, and there is always a lesson to learn.

I feel like that's the only way I'm going to improve myself. As long as each week I'm able to take something away and try to learn and grow from it, it's only going to be upwards from here. Yeah, it's a marathon, not a race, you know.

• It's just after noon on Tuesday here, which means I just watched Iga Swiatek 2 and 0 Karolina Muchova for her first Top 30 win of the year (wut). It's not the scoreline that's impressive here, it's the way she did it. Just vintage boa constrictor tennis, controlling the middle of the court with her heavy forehand/flat backhand combination, using her wheels when needed, and staying disciplined to not get baited into going for high-risk bangers. She shrunk the court early, pounded returns that left Muchova frustrated, and just squeezed her until the end. She'll get either Svitolina or Siniakova in the quarterfinals.

• I'm not sure it's worth reading TOO much into the result or performance...yet. This court is going to favor Iga over Kaja and Iga is just extremely familiar with Kaja's game and ball. They practice together often, including before this tournament. So I'm guessing there's a sense of clarity and confidence for Iga when she puts her Rafa game against Kaja's Roger game. BUT, seeing Iga play with more spin and patience over the last two matches is definitely worth noting.

• While Iga was dispatching Kaja, Cam Norrie eased past Rinky Hijikata in straight sets to make his first ATP Masters 1000 quarterfinal in exactly three years (2023 Indian Wells, l. Tiafoe). He'll get Carlos Alcaraz or Casper Ruud.

• Know Your Lore: Roddick x Stefanki is an outstanding listen. One of the great athlete-coaching partnerships:

• Jessica Pegula sat down with Doug Robson for a nice piece on her growing leadership role. She's in to the Indian Wells quarterfinals after beating Belinda Bencic for the first time (was 0-4, 0-8 in sets). She'll play either Elena Rybakina or Sonay Kartal. The Dubai champ is now riding an 8-match win streak. (LA Times via Yahoo)

Pegula jokes that she briefly interrupted a run of American female success when she fell in the 2024 U.S. Open final to No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka. But seeing close friend and teenage phenom Keys capture her major in Melbourne last year — after many wondered if her window had passed — hit closer to home.

“I think Madison winning Australia just motivated me even more,” Pegula says.

• Jon Wertheim takes on press conferences, politics in sports, and more in this week's mailbag. (SI.com)
• After his match-point saving effort against Foki, Learner Tien gets ready to face Jannik Sinner. (Tennis.com)

Q&A: Coach Michael Chang discusses Learner Tien’s potential, passion for the game and more

Michael Chang never planned to get into coaching, but Learner Tien’s team reached out and they turned out to be a remarkably good fit.

Yahoo SportsDouglas Robson

• It's time for everyone to learn a little tagalog:

• Ons Jabeur has dropped her first docu-vlog (what exactly do we call these things?) on her YouTube channel:

• Monte Carlo entry list is out. (Tick Tock Tennis)

• I thought this already happened but I guess not? Roger's a Billy. (ATP)

• I saw that parent tweet and the quote-tweet this morning and I've been thinking about it for hours because....YEP!
• In my few anecdotal conversations with fans, friends, co-w0rkers, it's hard not to shake that things don't exactly feel epic, legendary, or even....important at the moment? Sure, there are the Sincaraz finals, but those can lose their luster if it's all we have. I had been thinking about this a lot after the Australian Open, a tournament that just felt like it was chugging along. Yes, of course there are fun things that get us all up in a frazzle for 24-48 hours, but then, poof! They're gone like Keyser Soze.

• And to the tweeters' points, that "poof" is due to social media and the fragmented nature of media, which is felt even more in tennis because it's a sport where, except for the last one or two days of a tournament, no one is watching THE SAME THING at any given time. First of all, not everyone who cares about a thing is watching the thing because time zones, but also not everyone who cares about a thing is even watching the same thing. We're all watching different matches, which means there's no way to avoid diluting the excitement. Half of us are over here excited Iga found a topspin forehand, and another half are excited Cam Norrie found his mojo again. It's not unlike having an Olympics every day. I can't convince the curling fans to be interested in the freeskiing, and maybe we'll all watch the figure skating, but where you all during the gala? And sure, North Americans were obsessed with the hockey, but...no one else cared.
• I'm about to say something super blasphemous, but it almost makes me wish we were back in the old days where matches weren't streamed on the internet, and if we wanted to watch the tennis then we had to turn on CBS or ESPN and watch whatever those networks chose to show us. I'm not serious, actually, cuz my god no one needs to be subjected to network decisions – American tennis fans already whinge about what we're forced to watch on TC vs. T2 – but there's no denying what we've done to ourselves.

• Even in the early Twitter days, it used to be that you logged onto TT and everyone was pretty much talking about the same shit. Now we've all just disappeared into our corners. That's great for personalization and self-curation and, most definitely, for safety. But bad for community and, therefore, bad for shared experiences. And without shared experiences, we lose memory, lore, stories, moments. It's like everyone ordering Door Dash and no one interacting in shared public spaces anymore. It's Uber over public transportation. It's algorithms over newspapers. It's Netflix over cable. It's me being mad all the time about it.

• Everything is vibes now. Short-form content. Lolz and keke moments. Viral videos and goofs. Vibes are fun and vibes are necessary. But vibes don't make history. The tennis, the actual tennis, matters. The actual tennis – which sometimes I wonder if the people running all the marketing departments even like – is THE POINT. And this isn't even just about the marketing. The tennis players themselves need to realize this, too. There's space for all of it. But the balance is way off right now.
• Yes, this is just me shouting at clouds. We all know we can't stuff it all back in the box. But's important to know what we're losing so we can at least make the little decisions where we can to mitigate the losses.

• This was extremely painful reading/reliving for me, specifically. This is the only category I care about for Sunday. (The Ringer)

• Bop of the Day: