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- Week 34, 2025
Week 34, 2025
Gill Gross & Ben Ornstein
August 27, 2025
US Open Week 1
Holger Rune’s Will To Win
Why It’s Interesting: Rune talks to the Guardian’s Donald McRae about his current mindset, what it takes to compete with Alcaraz and Sinner, and the sacrifices behind his rise.
Novak Says Players Fell Short On Calendar Changes
Why It’s Interesting: Discontent with expanded Masters 1000s has grown among players recently. Djokovic explains why, to some extent, they have themselves to blame.
ATP 52-Week Hard Court Averages
Why It’s Interesting: Tennis Insights reveals the top players broken down by forehand & backhand quality, serve & return quality, and conversion & steal score.
How do the players compare❓
We take a deep dive into the numbers on hard courts in the past 52-weeks, examining who's on top in each category 📊
@carlosalcaraz leading the steal score💨
@janniksin top dog for return, backhand and converting when in attack 💫⭐
@DjokerNole
— Tennis Insights (@tennis_insights)
8:48 AM • Aug 22, 2025
Coco Gauff Makes Coaching Changes Days Before The US Open
More: Reworking serve technique four days before the start of a major certainly goes against conventional wisdom. But drastic times call for drastic measures… and Gill loves the move.
US Open Tech Innovation
More: From Match Chat, a real-time AI assistant answering stats and insights during all 254 singles matches, to live win-probability projections and instant article summaries, this year’s tournament offers an entirely new layer of interactivity.
More US Open Innovation: Fans are also able to seat availability on the outer courts and watch matches virtually with 3D models.
Ben’s Take: The US Open’s 3D models don’t even compare to the Australian Open’s cartoon mania.
Novak Djokovic Features On Jay Shetty’s Podcast
Why It’s Interesting: In a rare, deeply personal interview with Jay Shetty, Novak Djokovic gets raw and vulnerable, sharing untold struggles and the inner tools that helped him dominate tennis while discovering a deeper sense of purpose.
Full Jay Shetty Interview: See here
@jayshetty 🚨Brand new podcast🚨with @Novak Djokovic is out NOW on all patforms 🎙️ Search ‘Jay Shetty Novak Djokovic’ to watch or listen today!
Inside Tennis Journalism’s Survival Struggle
Why It’s Interesting: Tennis is a multibillion-dollar sport, but the journalism around it is vanishing.
Leaving You With 2025’s World’s Richest Tennis Players
On Monday Match Analysis, Gill previews the men's singles draw at US Open 2025. Jannik Sinner is the No. 1 seed and defending champion, 2022 champion Carlos Alcaraz is opposite the draw coming off a Cincinnati title, Alexander Zverev has shown signs of resurfacing the form of his Australian Open runner-up earlier this year and Taylor Fritz defends his first career major final off the back of a strong run of results. Ben Shelton, Jack Draper, Novak Djokovic and Karen Khachanov hope to cause disruptions as well. We'll go quarter-by-quarter with dark horses, upset alerts, popcorn matchups and predictions.
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Hey everyone, Gill Gross here. While I’m grateful for any amount of success I’ve had talking tennis on the internet for the past half decade, I believe we should all be doing better in this sport as creators and as fans. The tennis content economy is far behind other sports by metrics of engagement and popularity. This newsletter is our effort to DRAW the great things we find in tennis every week- we search for content that teaches us, makes us think, makes us laugh and ultimately makes loving this sport the best possible experience. Our vision is to speed up the growth of a robust content economy in tennis, for the benefit of fans, players and creators alike.