Look Who's Back
Jannik Sinner makes his return in Rome, wary of the rest of the field's reaction. Also read my exclusive interview with the author of a mind-blowing book about predicting career-ending injuries.
Welcome back! I’m so happy to see you all again for our Monday edition. I’ll start with a quick humble brag as the Tennis Sweet Spot cracked the Top 50 (#45) on Saturday of the “On the rise” substack category for sports newsletters. Even better? It cracked the Top 40 on Sunday (#38). I’m so grateful to all of you who subscribed (free and paid) and who keep reading and engaging with my tennis content. Let’s goooo! :)
So, what’s on today’s menu?
Jannik Sinner is coming back to the Tour, and I’m so impatient to see how it’s going to go.
Casper Ruud, Aryna Sabalenka and Naomi Osaka won big.
And then read an exclusive interview with Henry Abbott, the author of Ballistic, which might be the sports book of the year. Please - please! - do your body a favor and read that book. Also, if you’re an athlete, I cannot stress enough how important that read is. This could really be a before and after moment in sports training. The heart of the matter? Could we predict career-ending injuries? Yes, and P3 has been doing just that. The other heart of the matter? Immobility kills us all, and our bodies are way tougher than we let them be.
This publication is supported by readers, so if you like what you’re reading, don’t hesitate to spread the word, try a paid subscription, like this post, or leave a comment, as it helps TSS discoverability. You can also prefer to buy me a cuppa!
LOOK WHO’S BACK? 👀
ROME
Jannik Sinner paging the Tour: I’m back. Banned for three months following a deal cut with WADA, the World No.1 is returning to competition at home in Italy. Last year, a hip injury had prevented him from playing in Rome and so had prevented Rome from throwing him a party. This year should make up for that despite the context, as the Italian press already calls it, the return of the king. Not sure there could have been a better way to return to the Tour for Sinner, who logically is fearful of how the rest of the field will treat him. In Rome, he’ll be protected from whatever nuisance by the organization and the Italian federation as a whole. Proof? They’re going to give him his own space, called Fort Apache, away from the ATP locker room so that he can relax with his team and family. “We will create a Fort Apache for him because we believe he should be protected and should relax and prepare for his matches using as little energy as possible,” explained Angelo Binaghi, the president of the Italian federation (as also reported by La Gazzetta).
It’s not a first, as Novak Djokovic demanded the same treatment when he was World No.1, revealed Angelo Binaghi. For Djokovic, it was a power move. Another way to also show the field who was the boss: Do you see how much power I command? Do you see the privileges I can get? That was the vibe. It also surely helped increase the fear factor he already had on the field.
Avoidance is a risky strategy
Here, for Sinner, this is, in my opinion, the first mistake. It’s not coming from a place of power but from a place of fear. And the field knows it. Sinner is going to have to get back in that locker room at some point anyway, so it would have been better to be done with it already, especially in Rome where, seriously, nobody is going to have a go at him. Also, this is tennis: Nobody will have a go at Sinner in that locker room. I’m really not sure avoidance is the right step, and as I’ve also said many times here, Sinner needs to get a hold of that locker room. He’s the World No.1, the most dominating player for a while now, the one who’s also signing all the lucrative deals, also someone whose personality and work ethic have always been praised, and yet he got dragged and is still getting dragged by too many of his peers to feel comfortable.
Sure, some of it comes with the territory when you’ve been so dominant. Yet, had the same thing happened to someone like Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal, I swear that no player would have dared to say a thing to his face or behind his back. Not saying it’d have been right, just saying that it’s how things would have played. The Sinner Case has shown how little leverage he had in that locker room, and that should be something he tackles head-on. Instead of retreating to an ivory tower. Instead of isolating himself and only picking players who supported him to hit with. Or, indeed, his life on Tour could turn a little sour for a while. Sometimes, you just need to rip the Band-Aid off.
Sometimes, you just need to rip the Band-Aid off.
Sinner didn’t like the atmosphere around him in the locker room at the Australian Open, saying "It was a bit like some players looked at me differently and I didn't like it at all," to RAI. He also said that made him think of giving it all up. Yet, he won that Australian Open. Despite being in that locker room. Opponents will always search for an edge on the court or off the court, so if they feel they can derail Sinner by ostracizing him, they will do it. One more reason to get back in that locker room as soon as possible. To show no fear. Both ITIA and WADA said his case was an accidental contamination case, so they basically cleared his name from doping. Then, there is no reason for Sinner not to get back in that locker room with the confidence of the innocent. That’s the only message he should work on in Rome, not giving his opponents more power by showing them the side-eyes work.
Also, he has the upper hand in this return to competition, as he is still the World No.1 after quite an incredible own goal from Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz. It’s also an optics issue for me: What does it look like to the general public that Sinner is put in a different room, cut off from the rest of the players because he doesn’t want to interact with them as he returns from a doping ban? It might be fine in Italy, but not sure it’s going to be seen as a good move elsewhere. Also, Yes, the locker room can be a toxic place, but isn’t the saying about keeping your enemies closer?
What level to expect from Sinner? That’s the other big question. Three months without competing is a big gap in a season, even for someone who was at the top of the game. I don’t doubt his tennis will be fine, as his technique is flawless and his power is built in these strokes with simple and so efficient patterns ; I’m just wondering how his body will react to the chock of both competing again and being logically stressed out a little about it. In my recent interview with his former coach, Riccardo Piatti, he told me that in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sinner had actually taken advantage of the situation to go through a huge training block and that it paid off. He has surely tried the same this time with his team.
What did he say on Monday? Jannik Sinner gave a press conference in Rome on Monday and repeated that he hadn’t wanted to accept the deal from WADA, but “Sometimes we have to choose the best in a very bad moment.” He also said that th toughest was when he discovered he wouldn’t be allowed into any stadium to watch sports. Overall he said he was happy to be back and curious to see at what level he now stands. “I feel rested, physically and mentally, which will pay off at the end of the season.” His goal in Rome? “Getting through the first round, and then we’ll see.”
QUESTION OF THE DAY
You were 53% to say we should put Holger Runer on the contenders’ list for Roland-Garros.
ATP/WTA - WHAT HAPPENED?
So Many Things.
Ruud And Sabalenka Crowned in Madrid
It’s funny how things work sometimes in tennis. In Barcelona, Casper Ruud said his goal for the next weeks would be to reach the quarter-finals of every event he’d play. It raised eyebrows. I asked him about it in Madrid, and he explained that if he only aimed for the titles, it’d be too big a risk of constant disappointment and also too much pressure. You can listen to it again here, where he also shows a lot of clarity on himself when he explains the limitations of his game style:
So, yes, look at him! He won his first Masters 1000 on Sunday! Tricking your brain, people, that’s the unsung hero of professional tennis strategy. Ruud won big in Madrid as he also kind of re-launched his 2025 season. He wasn’t looking that good until Spain, but now? Let’s see! Especially with Carlos Alcaraz being injured, Jannik Sinner just coming back, and Alexander Zverev still being stuck.
As explained in that post, Ruud might have also saved his year by confronting the mental stress he was starting to be under, wondering why he was even out there playing. He also gains logical praise for supporting Iga Swiatek and saying he follows women’s tennis. Andy Murray’s True Heir might be from Norway. Also, watch out for Jack Draper (now a Top 5 player) because that lefty paw looked scary good on Madrid’s fast clay. As far as Aryna Sabalenka is concerned, things are looking pretty good these days as she piles the finals and the titles. She got her third crown in Madrid (and 20th title) by beating Coco Gauff, whose tennis was looking so much better in Spain and so who should be back on track to be a force to reckon with at Roland-Garros. Now let’s also see, from Rome to Paris, if Iga Swiatek can get back to being Iga Swiatek on that court.
Naomi Osaka, first time!
Naomi Osaka did it: She won the first title on clay of her career, in the beautiful city of Saint-Malo. When you think she was down 4-1 in the third set against Diane Parry in her second match in France… Osaka, who told me in Madrid that she changed her preparation for clay this year, needed that WTA 125 title. Why? Because she needed the matches won and the hours on the court to finally boost a confidence level that had been hampered since her injury in the final in Auckland in January? her motivation to keep playing is tied to winning; we all know it. So Saint-Malo might have already given more length to her career. Her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, explained the importance of that first title since her return to the Tour last year. “The pressure was really high on her. But on the other hand, that’s what we needed. That’s what she needed in order to start really the season on clay on good terms. She needed some wins. And she had, as many as she could this week, and she needed to that also to feel good on the surface.”
Bianca Andreescu also tried to get more matches under her belt in a WTA 125, in Lerida, but she lost in the first round in singles against Kimberly Birrell, yet she got some more on-court time as she won the doubles title with Aldila Sutjiadi.
Borna Coric Wins Again
As a loyal Tennis Sweet Spot reader, you know I had a chat with Borna Coric in Madrid about the dark time he went through last year when his game was collapsing in front of his eyes, also following many injury comebacks. And so you know how he worked hard to rebuild that game, going back to the Challengers with great success. Well, Coric did it again on Sunday, claiming his fourth title of the year in that category by beating Stan Wawrinka on the clay of Aix-en-Provence. He’s now #84 in the ranking.
Felix Auger-Aliassime’s struggles continue
It’s quite incredible, but Felix Auger-Aliassime has just won one match (in Miami) since reaching the final in Dubai. The Canadian, who won two titles in three finals this year, is at a loss to understand what’s happening. But he will figure it out, as he explained in Estoril after losing in his first match.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: “It's A Sea Change In How We Understand Human Bodies And Movement And Athleticism,” Henry Abbott
What if injuries didn’t have to be a part of professional sports? What if science and data could predict the worst before it happens?
Trust me on that, please, and do your body a favor by reading Ballistic by Henry Abbott. It’s in this category of books that rewire your brain. I had a similar experience reading this to reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It just opens up entirely new areas to explore and makes direct cause and effect about things you wouldn’t have guessed. I’m not a numbers person, I’m not a data person, and P3 should thank Abbott for finding ways to get their work through in such an easy way. It’s a gold mine on so many levels, and the amount of incredible stories it contains is baffling. Also, the part about the psoas?! I mean… The things you learn. As I told Henry Abbott: “Okay, so where’s your movie deal or your series deal now? Because I’d read hours of this, but I’d also watch hours of this.”
Every athlete, professional or not, every parent of athletes, every trainer and physiotherapist, every agent, every sponsor, every tournament or franchise owner should read this. At a time when professional sports are worth billions but are also destroying bodies on the regular, Ballistic shows that injuries don’t have to be part of the equation. How? By presenting the fascinating work done in Santa Barbara by Marcus Elliott (who’s a passionate tennis player, Abbott told me), who has been quietly changing NBA players’, volleyball players’, and NFL players’ careers, among many others (including tennis players), and whose potential in professional tennis is a given.
Think about the great players we lost due to what remain career-ending injuries. Imagine Rafael Nadal’s knees, foot, and hip injuries could have been avoided. Andy Murray’s hip condition? Roger Federer’s knee? Maria Sharapova’s shoulder? Recently, Clara Burel and Lois Boisson’s ACL tears, or Lucas Pouille’s Achille? Tennis is the land of shoulders (Joachim Johansson), backs (Mario Ancic), knees (Roger Federer, Marat Safin, Simona Halep), hips (Andy Murray, Magnus Norman) career-ending injuries. What if all of them could be addressed before the pain starts or the tear happens? And it starts with simple questions: Are you landing with your toes up? With which force? How’s your natural hip mobility? What about your psoas? You did your ACL, but how was your ankle doing before that? Your back hurts, but is the issue really your back? How Do You Move? Once you’ve read that, you can’t go back. I’m still haunted by the part about Derrick Rose. You’d think that injury prevention would be at the top of everyone’s priorities, but then it’s professional sports, where money talks louder. So sometimes, people prefer not knowing or pretending they don’t. P3 actually helps athletes get back control over their bodies here.
Henry Abbott loves sports and loves moving. As you’ll read in the book, he’s had his share of severe injuries (and of encounters with bears, too), and so he was naturally interested in the topic. After years at ESPN, where he launched True Hoop and headed the NBA coverage, he relaunched it all on his own in 2019. He writes two newsletters: True Hoop and Writing Activity. He’s passionate about professional sports and even more about athletes. That shines through his book: It’s all about athletes’ bodies seen as endangered species and what to do about it. “It's obviously better to prevent these things, right? It's obviously right to use the movement data,” he preaches. I’ll add the obvious: Believe in science, please.
I'm obsessed with your book. I've been yelling in the void in tennis that we get way too many career-ending injuries and that players are left disabled by their sport. Some former players are now barely able to walk. That's not normal. Also, as a former volleyball and tennis player, that read hit close to home many times!
It does seem so sad, like we select the very best athletes, right? These tennis players are unbelievable, they're long-limbed, and we ruin them. We ruin the best bodies. It's kind of weird.
“We ruin the best bodies. It's kind of weird.”
So, after reading Ballistic, I just want to ask you: How are you? Because I read all about your injuries in that book. So, has P3 fixed you?
It's been a bit of a journey. Yes, I felt amazing: last summer, I was invincible. I felt like I was 25 years old. But because I'm at the computer a lot, I got this little stupid thing where I pinched a nerve in my neck, so that kept me from doing my regular P3 workouts for a while. It took months for me to really sort that out. I had pain and tingling down my left arm for a long time. So, while I was working that out, I got a little bit of a revisit of my lower back pain. So, I'm just now, finally, at this point, getting back to being able to do my regular routines again. I came into it with a pretty messed up lower back. I actually talked to Alex - the guy at the lab who really helped me before - and he gave me a different routine now. I did it this morning, and I'm already thinking like an athlete again.
You write a book, and then you end in the book, which has to be weird! What surprised you the most after that deep dive into P3 and all this talk with Marcus Elliott? Have you found out something you couldn't have imagined?
So much. Honestly, I feel like I have a lot of friends who have written books, and they all get bored by the book. I never got bored. I kept learning new things. Today, I'm still calling and texting and visiting them, because they just have opened a new door into seeing things I care about a lot. So I think the biggest takeaway for me is probably we're well-designed to move. Our bodies are well-designed. It's good to go do things. So I think that's the main thing: feel free and don't be afraid, your body is good.
And then I think the secondary thing is when it goes awry, it's not like you need a new leg, right? It's like an orchestra, 600 muscles that are controlled by the conductor of your brain. If you think about a master conductor, you're just like, “Oh, the violin is a little bit out of key.” There are these little things that need to be fixed. It's a very complicated thing, but there are ways to sort of navigate this, and feeling is part of it, and belief is part of it. But also, there are some mild mechanics that we are just starting to understand.
Immobility kills, that’s one thing I knew but that really struck me on a different level while reading your book. So many things are counterintuitive, like athletes doing better barefoot than with super expansive and advanced sneakers. What we get from the book is actually how little we know about how our body works best.
Totally, totally. So, here's the kind of crazy thoughts that I've been having. So, if you're barefoot, then your foot gets all of the information from the ground, right? Maybe it hurts a little bit. Similarly, if you're in the wind or in the rain, then your body is getting all of this, and it's a little bit harder, right? And so the more you protect it, so a bigger shoe, or similarly, you and I are both in big buildings with roofs that are completely protected: The more you protect it, a little bit the dumber it gets in coping with things. It doesn't mean that one is wrong and one is right, but I think that you want to have a body that's well-prepared to cope with things, which means you have to expose it to the elements more... Our bodies are designed for that.
Marcus Elliott sounds to me like an outlier, like one of those personalities that come out of nowhere and think out of the box. Predicting injuries sounds like such a blockbuster; you would think everybody would be on it. And yet, it's so niche, and they seem like they've been the only ones doing it for a decade. It's crazy.
It is so strange. The broad belief is that we can't do it. The broad belief is that it can't be done. But now it seems pretty clear to me that it can be done, and it will be done, and it is being done. And they don't have a monopoly on it, but they're close. I mean, they have 134.4 terabytes of granular movement data from elite athletes, and I don't think anybody else has that. Only now is it a big enough data set that they can start really querying.
So there was a story recently where an athlete tore his ACL, and whenever something like that happens, they go back and look through the whole database to say, “Would we have caught it? Do we have the preconditions?” It was a very rare case where they had assessed the athlete, but they saw no preconditions. But they did know that he had had a bad ankle sprain. But now they can say, well, wait, are there other cases that we had no evidence but ankle sprain? And the answer was all of them. Now, it's a big enough data set that they can just keep asking questions and keep seeing cause and effect. We're going to learn everything from this. We're going to unlock so much about human potential from this kind of data. Something you couldn't imagine.
Franchises, club owners, sponsors, etc., pay a fortune to get the best athletes. In the NBA, they send some of these players to be assessed by P3, and then sometimes they’re told not to make them play because of what they found out. They’ll go and say, if you make them play, they’ll tear their ACL, for example. So I’m also wondering if P3’s work remains niche because, well, some just don't want to know and bench their millions of dollars stars for a proven risk that yet nobody can say when it’ll come to fact.
That's a great question. I think that it's changing, but these things take so much longer. I used that cardiology example. So it was so many decades of we kind of know how to prevent heart attacks, but it took the president having a heart attack in office for that to become popularized. I think we're just in those decades where so many people are like, well, does it really work? Is it really a thing? And, you know, from my point of view, having spent so much time looking at it, it seems super clear.
And you've read the book, so it seems good. But I think to most people, it just hasn't seemed clear. It seems everything's confusing in this world. Here's the other problem: This is a big-data complicated project for people who went to Stanford, Columbia, and Harvard. If you're a regular trainer, it's very hard for you to participate at all. But every sports organization has a trusted medical professional trainer who just doesn't know about this. And so they're very threatened by it. So I think that there are a lot of really well-meaning teams that are just like, “Oh, I don't know, sounds weird.” Or, like, they don't want to make themselves obsolete. So they're like, “Well, let's assume that's not true.”
I told a few people in tennis already that they really need to read your book. Like, for their own sake.
Thank you. I do feel that way. They sent me a box of books a while ago. Well, first I had the ARC, the Advanced Review Copy. Had a bunch of those. But I kept going just out of personal concern. I'd be at dinner with someone or at some event, and I'd be like, “Oh, my gosh, you're telling me this story about your hips. I need to give you this book.” So I gave them all away. I do feel like I'm sitting on this, yet everybody needs this. Everybody needs to know what Marcus knows.
“Everybody needs this. Everybody needs to know what Marcus knows.”
Did you realize from the start that you had a book that would be useful to people? What would you want the impact of that book to be?
I say this, and it sounds really cheesy and salesy, but the way Marcus and I know each other is super authentic. No part of what he wants to do is trying to make a quick buck. He wants people to see his life mission and make people feel better. He's suspicious and frankly bad at business, right?
Yes, stop telling your rivals your plan and stop giving the info away!
He's always going to do that. Like he's always going to do that. And I have this weird hang-up that goes deep, deep psychologically in me where I just hate being lied to, and I hate lying. I just want to tell the truth, and we see eye to eye on this thing. We both feel sports can be rough on people like us, but we're doing this for real. No part of this is gamesmanship or sales. It's just super authentic, and we're just trying to make it honest.
Before this, and because it was the pandemic and the NBA was shut down, I started writing about dirty money in sports and money laundering and sports washing. It was such a bummer. It was a difficult thing to do every day. I was down. And so I wanted to write about something inspiring, something honest, uplifting, and helpful. I knew enough about P3 and Marcus that they were my first thought, so I called them and said, “Would you participate? Would you take time with me to do this?” And they said yes. So I hoped that it would open useful things up. I didn't know it would be quite so broadly applicable. I do think it's a sea change in how we understand human bodies and movement and athleticism. And I think that the future will look very different than the past because of this work.
There was an NBA team that believed very deeply in what P3 was doing but decided not to have them assess their whole team. But Marcus's point was, “Look, you and I both know that if we assess the 17 players we have under contract, we're going to find probably three or four of them have some emergent concern. They still have that even if we don't assess them.” These things are all tricky, and it's not always the case that you want to know everything about your body. But if you're trying to work really hard to move and to bet maybe even your career on moving well, then this is pretty helpful.
“I wanted to write about something inspiring, something honest, uplifting, and helpful.”
Your book is so current because it's all about, “This is the truth. You can choose to ignore it, but it doesn't change that it's the truth.” Yet it's incredible how many people can say, “I don't want to know.”
It's so funny you say that because you know there are little quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Marcus and I were hiking at some point, and I was like, “Hey, listen, I'm putting together this giant list of little quotes, so if you have any that you love, share them with me.” We talked through his favorite quotes, which were all exactly what you're saying. I think there's something about not even God can make two plus two not equal four. There are all these kinds of quotes, and all Marcus' favorite quotes are like that. It's just math, right? To him, it's the physics of these injuries. Once you get all the data together, the physics is actually very simple. Like, if you put this many newtons of force into that joint line with that direction, etc.
Can you walk me through this misogi? You use fear to push your limits? I was like, it is insane, and then, “Oh wow, that worked.”
They're crazy. There was this Harvard fatigue laboratory research which was like, you know, inhuman and cruel, but they had a cold room and a hot room, and they would have people do crazy hard things, and the takeaway is that we're so adaptable as a species that it's very hard to find physical limits to what we can do. Pretty much, we can do all these really hard things, and so we have a sense of our limits, and it seems pretty clear in the research that when your brain feels like your body is getting close to a perceived limit, your brain starts to limit you.
But we can do a lot more than we think. The things that I've been dealing with are like, can I make my hips more mobile? Part of my brain is like, no, no, no, that's too hard. But then I think about these hard things people have done in the past and so, like, it’s nothing. So, that's the idea of Misogi: Pick an assignment that you think you have about a 50% likelihood of completing that you haven't trained for, that you do with friends in nature, like paddle boarding 26 miles or mountain climbing type things, and give it a whirl and then everybody I know who's done it comes away with this kind of intense, calm, self-regard for like, “I can probably do that. I'm not going to rule myself out of being capable of the next challenge.”
That's what I like about your book because it's about sports, but also you can see how it could be spread to society as well. I mean, move more, take care of your body more, and think about how it moves. It's a general message on how we need to move.
They say that you're supposed to think of a target audience when you write a book. At one point, I was a judge in a CrossFit competition, and I was like, all of these people here are dying for anything that helps. They're going to be the first ones, right? They want to know, and most gyms have one or two books that the trainer has, and I was like. Hopefully, they have one more book now. So they're the first ones, but of course, you hope it grows, and I felt like it started to really matter.
Just in talking to my family and friends, there were so many people who weren't particularly athletic but who I felt like, “Oh, I know a thing that can help you.” I gave it to my in-laws, my kids, and my wife had already read it, but just to get some early feedback. My father-in-law, who is pretty fit but has never thought of himself as an athlete, read it, and it just completely changed his life. He just started moving way more, and now he goes to the gym twice a week and works with his trainer. He lives not too far away, but he used to drive over. Not anymore. Now, he walks over.
I like when you say by the end of the book that it's tricky because if you do the job correctly, nothing happens. So, what's the proof that it's working? Well, because nothing happens, no injury.
That's always the problem. I've spent a lot of time in advanced analytics in basketball, and, you know, if you're an amazing ball handler, all that happens is you don't turn it over. That's what happens, and nobody notices. There's nothing to see.
“It's so much better to prevent these crises than to deal with them after the fact.”
I mean, you're a big professional sports fan. I love pro sports, too. Is there still a way to say we love it but also be real about the fact that it's destroying people?
I feel that way every day. It's got problems, but it’s also beautiful. The hard work that goes into this is incredible, right? I mean, they just work so hard, these athletes. It's hard to be perfect, and I don't think we're going to be perfect, but I think that we should continue to improve. Everyone should do their best. You need to stand up and do your job, right? We need to be heard, and if everyone does their best, we probably do, and then the results will be a lot better for the athletes.
Being healthy and moving has become a luxury because you need to be able to pay for the physio, you need to pay for moving. Not a lot of people have access to this knowledge, so moving has now become a luxury.
I totally agree. Yesterday I went to Walmart which is like where regular people shop, right? It's not fancy in there at all, and you had to do the self-checkout. And I was just looking around at everyone in the self-checkout area, and I think 70% of people were in pain. You could see it was really hard to get something out of the cart, scan, or this or that. And most of the people who have been helpful to me with my body don't take insurance. I get to say I will keep looking for an answer until I find it, as does a professional tennis player. But for most people, maybe you can get time out of work to go to physical therapy, but maybe you can't. So we have a long way to go, but I think that it's so much better to prevent these crises than to deal with them after the fact.
What's next for the journey of your book? Is Netflix going to put you in a room with a camera and Derrick Rose and blow up the entire NBA?
We've talked about so many things. I have a Google Drive full of mixed ideas. The thing that really is happening right now is that there is a really great Hollywood producer that I’ve been working with on a proposal for a docu-series. But with these things, you never know. There's a lot of stuff that you just can't put in a book. But in a docu-series, you could have a real, super slow-mo, HD, here's how somebody lands, and you could animate how their hips could be a little different, right? So much better. Also, everybody who has kids and who reads this book wants to know what to tell their kids, so I'm interested in that, too. What do you make for a kid so that they feel like they can really move?
SOME BREAK POINTS…
Venus Williams will attend Roland-Garros but not as a player. The tennis icon and Lacoste ambassador (that might also play a role in her landing at the French Open) will be in Paris as a media personality as she joins TNT Sports’ broadcast team. The rest of the team? VIP Only: Andre Agassi, Chrissie Evert, Jim Courier, John McEnroe, Lindsay Davenport, Sloane Stephens and Caroline Wozniacki.
Tyra Grant, 17, will no longer represent the United States but Italy. She has both citizenships and decided to opt for the European one after being born and raised in Italy. She used to train at the Piatti Academy, but she moved to the US in 2023 to train at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen with that now.
Sky Sports released a study about women’s sports fandom that confirms things are changing. 80% of UK sports fans say they are interested in at least one women’s sport. Audiences who watch both men's and women’s sports prove to be more commercially valuable. You can find the study here.