In Episode 29 of the Tennis Abstract Podcast, with Carl Bialik of the Thirty Love podcast, we spend so much time talking about the Davis Cup reforms, if ITF head David Haggerty were to listen, he’d immediately try to change our format to something shorter. While we recorded the episode before yesterday’s finals in Cincinnati, we also touch on several other topics: the impressiveness of Novak Djokovic’s career record at all the Masters, the players who–like Sloane Stephens–have powerful groundstrokes that they save for special occasions, and Simona Halep’s aggressive scheduling.
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(Note: this week’s episode is about 66 minutes long; in some browsers the audio player may display a different length. Sorry about that!)
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Update: Episode index with links, thanks to FBITennis:
| Davis Cup Reforms Generally | 1:49 |
| Team and mixed gender tennis trend | 6:15 |
| Effect of DC reforms on smaller tennis federations | 8:11 |
| Will big stars play more often in the new DC format? | 12:17 |
| Davis Cup analogy to World Baseball Classic | 18:39 |
| Which countries benefit most from the new DC format? | 22:09 |
| Cincinnati F (men’s): Djokovic v Federer | 26:05 |
| US Open favorites (men’s) | 29:45 |
| How close is Stan Wawrinka in getting back to form? | 33:12 |
| Variation in ground stroke speed (e.g., Wawrinka, Stephens) | 37:10 |
| Simona Halep’s crazy schedule | 47:05 |
| Discussion of New Haven event | 50:26 |
| US Open qualifying matches (how to choose?) | 57:00 |