The centre court in Bastad was jammed on a Monday afternoon. For doubles. The Nadal factor at work.
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Another big day for tennis, mostly on the dirt, with four men’s events and two women’s events rolling out a lot of seeded players.
Many eyes wil be on Rafael Nadal, who will play his first singles match since losing in the first round of Roland Garros, as he ratchets it up again before a return to Paris for the Olympics.
And the fact that the draw gods decreed that he will face Leo Borg, the 21-year-old scion of another Roland Garros legend, is the stuff of scripwriters’ dreams.
The two practiced together last Friday.
Borg v Nadal pic.twitter.com/xTSBs4fbzM
— Nordea Open (@NordeaOpen) July 12, 2024
You hope Pops will be on hand.
The stadium was packed on a rainy Monday afternoon, just for the doubles. It’s going to be a pretty tough ticket today, you’d imagine.
Also in action: Arthur Fils, Zhang Zhizhen and Holger Rune in Hamburg, Stan Wawrinka and Matteo Berrettini in Gstaad and Canadian Gabriel Diallo on grass in Newport on the men’s side.
On the women’s side, No. 1 seed Diana Shnaider in Budapest and, later in the day, No. 1 seed Zheng Qinwen in steamy Palermo.
Orders of play here:
US Open USTA wild card challenge update
It’s that time of year again, where American players outside the top 100 vie for that precious wild-card spot in the US Open main draw.
The “Challenge” has completed its first week on the men’s side. And it’s 18-year-old Californian Learner Tien who sits on top, after he won his first career Challenger title in Michigan. The best four results over six weeks will count.
The women start their version this week, with their best three results over the next four weeks determining the winner.
Nicolas Moreno de Alboran and Sachia Vickery were the winners of the Roland Garros wild card challenge; Patrick Kypson and McCartney Kessler won the wild cards for the Australian Open in January.
Atlanta adds ADF to field
The Atlanta Open, which is going to be a casualty of the extended draws in Canada and Cincinnati as of next year, is having its finale.
And it has the bad luck of being scheduled on hard courts in North America, the week before the Olympic event on clay in Paris.
So it’s scrambling for players. The good news is that it has added former top-20 player Reilly Opelka, who has been out nearly two years with hip and wrist surgeries and only returned to the court Monday, on the grass in Newport.
In a surprise, it also added top Spanish player Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.
Davidovich Fokina is having a terrible year; only once (in Marseille in February) so far this season has he won two completed matches back-to-back. He lost in the first round at Queen’s Club to Cana-Chilean Alejandro Tabilo. And then he withdrew from Wimbledon with a back injury, which allowed Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard to enter the draw as a lucky loser and make his run.
More pertinent, though, is that Davidovich Fokina also withdrew from the Olympic event. So to add Atlanta to his sked a short time later is unexpected. He has to hedge his bets, though; the 25-year-old Spaniard has a semifinal to defend in Montreal in a few weeks. So if he thinks he’s feeling healthy enough, it’s smart to try to get to North American early and do that.
(Of course, he’s not there YET. We’ll have to wait and see).
Five American women ranked in the top 15
With the arrival of Emma Navarro to the No. 15 spot in the rankings on Monday, that makes five American women in the top 15 this week.
It’s been nearly 20 years since that happened. And while this year’s crop doesn’t have the collective resumé of the top four women on the 2004 list – and likely never will – the tennis landscape has changed immeasurably since then.
It’s a pretty huge achievement for American women’s tennis.
Tennis is Doc-hot these days
Tennis is apparently the new, cool thing to make documentaries about, to bring the sport to a wider audience.
(Which makes it all the more disappointing that “Break Point” was such a dud. But that’s another topic entirely).
Roger Federer’s flick about the final days before his retirement dropped a month ago. Now comes news that Carlos Alcaraz, crowned Wimbledon champion on Sunday, will hit Neflix in 2025. With two majors so far in 2024, there’s plenty of material.
Good morning to the Wimbledon champ.
— Netflix (@netflix) July 15, 2024
An all-new documentary series chronicling Carlos Alcaraz's 2024 season is coming to Netflix in 2025! pic.twitter.com/rvR4EbXGFz
Who else is out there right now?
Well, Serena Williams eight-part docuseries “In the Arena” premiered last week on ESPN+ (if you wondered why she’s been getting SO much exposure the last little while).
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A documentary about Michael Chang called “American Son” will debut on ESPN’s “30 for 30” series on July 29 at 7 p.m. Production was reportedly completed on this nearly two years ago, with the central point that moment when Chang (and his infamous underhand serve) beat Ivan Lendl to win the 1989 French Open – with the Tiananmen Square massacre as a backdrop. It was supposed to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, but was pulled at the last minute and rescheduled for 2024.
Somewhere, eventually, we might actually get to see the finished product of a Novak Djokovic project that was first anounced 3 1/2 years ago at the 2021 Australian Open. Last summer, Djokovic said they’d originally hoped it would be out by the end of that year or in 2022, but that “a lot is going on in my career, so we’re trying to come up with the best possible plan on how to present it.” He also said they hadn’t decided whether it would be a film or a series, and also hadn’t settled on a partner for the project.
And not really a peep since, although he keeps adding onto his story.
The Australian Open did premiere a one-hour doc back in May.
No Venus at Atlanta exho
Venus Williams, who is into all sorts of pursuits these days, is maintaining the veneer of still being a tennis player that is central to her brand.
But the reality is sort of something else.
And although the American legend, who turned 44 a month ago, was announced along with Sloane Stephens as a participant in the Atlanta Open’s annual lip service to the women – an exhibition on the Sunday before the event – Williams is out.
She said she aggravated an abdominal issue during a practice session.
Sloane Stephens and Taylor Townsend will go head-to-head in the Sunday Showdown delivered by @UPS on July 21. Townsend, who is scheduled to compete in the #Wimbledon doubles final on Saturday, takes the place of Grand Slam champ Venus Williams.
— Atlanta Open 🎾 (@ATLOpenTennis) July 12, 2024
🔗 More: https://t.co/XPvfUpfoLE pic.twitter.com/b6qcODnqC4
The tournament came up with a pretty good substitute: Taylor Townsend, who lived in the Atlanta area for many years, steps in. That she became a Wimbledon champion over the weekend only makes that even better.
Hopefully she was able to renegotiate her appearance fee upward.
Townsend played Coco Gauff at this event in 2022, after stepping in for an injured Leylah Fernandez.
Wimbledon ratings down in the UK
It was a pretty packed sporting day, to put that in context. But the viewership on the BBC for the WImbledon men’s final was down a fair bit from 2023, even with the same two protagonists.
The peak audience was 7.6 million viewers (peak a year ago was 11.3 million). and the streaming numbers were down 25 per cent (3.3 million from 4.1 million). Not too surprising given that, unlike last year’s five-set thriller, this one was fairly cursory.
The women’s final, which featured two surprises without huge followings in the UK, also was down in the ratings – a peak of 4.1 million compared to 4.5 million a year ago. The streaming numbers (1.9 million) were up 50 per cent from a year ago).
In comparison, US viewership small
To give you an idea of the difference between the “home” Slam airing on a national network, and one on the other side of the pond airing on a sports cable channel, here was some info from ESPN last week, before the final days of the Wimbledon fortnight.
Even though the U.S. has six times the population of the U.K. And that the Americans had had a pretty good Wimbledon to that point.
And these are numbers they’re happy to announce have increased over last year.
2024 #Wimbledon viewership up thru the Quarterfinals across ESPN platforms pic.twitter.com/WZssadSDNe
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) July 12, 2024
Here’s what they announced for the Friday men’s semis.
Friday's 2024 #Wimbledon Semifinal matches, featuring No. 3 Alcaraz-No 5. Medvedev & No. 2 Djokovic-No. 25 Musetti, on ESPN were the most-watched since 2019 pic.twitter.com/g1s6d2e8DQ
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) July 15, 2024
Considering how many commentators they bring over and how much it all costs, those are not the numbers you would ideally want. Still under a million viewers.
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