Madrid Open Chaos, Carlos Alcaraz Injury, and Challenger Highlights – Ground Pass Podcast
Anastasia and Nick are back with a full episode, and it’s a packed one!
They kick off with a spoiler-free discussion of the new Carlos Alcaraz documentary on Netflix, sharing thoughts on Carlos’ mindset, why it’s refreshing to see athletes prioritize happiness, and a few can’t-miss moments (including a sweet encounter with Roger Federer!).
Then it’s onto the latest tennis news:
The chaos unfolding at the Madrid Open 🎾
Carlos Alcaraz’s tough clay season scheduling and injury news 🇪🇸
Big first-round exits for top players like Novak Djokovic and Holger Rune
Why Jannik Sinner’s absence might be changing the men’s tour energy
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina’s strong season so far 🔥
Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff surviving early-round scares at Madrid
Naomi Osaka’s next steps after an early Madrid exit—and the rising trend of players taking Challenger wildcards for match play
Updates on Emma Raducanu, Maria Sakkari, and other names heating up the women’s tour
Plus: a historic run at the Côte d’Ivoire Challenger 🏆
No Player of the Fortnight this week — and Anastasia and Nick explain why they’re waiting for a breakout story worth highlighting.
Don’t miss:
➔ A little tease about the next Meet the Professionals episode
➔ Some love for Challenger events (and why you should absolutely go to one near you!)
Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your pods.
Follow Ground Pass for daily tennis updates on Instagram, Threads, X, and Bluesky.
TRANSCRIPT
Anastasia - Ground Pass (00:13)
Look, hi guys, hi everyone. If you're not watching this, you're obviously missing our visual representation of the week in tennis.
Nick Carter (00:22)
Tennis according to mime.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (00:23)
tennis according to mime, that's your cue to please watch us on YouTube because you're missing all the good stuff. You're missing the fun, the laughs, the jokes. And if you're not getting the full experience of ground pass, what are you doing? What are you even doing?
Nick Carter (00:37)
Are you saying you can't watch it on Spotify anymore?
Anastasia - Ground Pass (00:39)
You can totally watch us on Spotify still, which is good for all of you Spotify listeners. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Groundpass. Nick and I, your favorite funny, lighthearted tennis lovers are back to entertain you.
We don't take this seriously, folks.
Nick Carter (00:56)
and show you around the tennis.
Anastasia I never took this seriously.
I hate to break it to you.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (01:00)
Always,
we always keep it light over here. Nick, how has your week been? We actually recorded already this week. We did our Meet the Professionals episode, which is coming soon. Well, we will tease the guests when the time comes, but it was a fun recording.
Nick Carter (01:16)
It was definitely a fun recording. learned a lot. Definitely learned a lot. It always seems to be stuff from towards the end of our interviews that always stick with me, but I'd say you do want to stick around to the end of the episode because there's definitely a couple of anecdotes that our guest gave that have stuck with me through the last couple of days.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (01:32)
Yeah, yeah, it was a really fun one. But other than that, how did your week go?
Nick Carter (01:36)
I mean, I'm glad I got to watch some tennis, not a lot, but, you know, there's been enough of it to entertain me. Other than that, you know, I've just spent most of my week being a nerd because that's what I do in my spare time.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (01:49)
Same. I got a new camera that I don't know how to use. So I've been watching a lot of YouTube tutorial videos to try and figure out the settings and, you know, because I'm trying to learn how to take like manual, you know, not just like automatic, like put the camera on auto. So I'm learning all the manual settings and all of that. So that's been fun. And just like you. Yeah, exactly. ⁓
Nick Carter (02:03)
⁓
You learn how to use the camera properly.
I
got a new camera as well, but very different kind of camera. Don't know if anyone's noticed so far that you can actually read what's on my bookshelves. Again, if you watch the video, yeah, I actually have a decent camera now for webcam stuff and so far seems to be working. But yes, if anyone has any questions about what on is I read, feel free to ask.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (02:13)
Ooh!
Exactly. You read a lot. So much so that you have to get another bookshelf, Nick.
Nick Carter (02:40)
I did, yes. Like you also change in the background. I now have two bookcases behind me when I'm recording because I genuinely had books that didn't have a home and I needed some more space. So that's what I did. And it's going well so far, I think. The good news is now I have room to rescue some more books.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (03:00)
More books. I suggested you put like a tennis ball or something on one of the shelves. So we'll see if that shows up in one of our episodes. Don't go get it now. Later. ⁓
Nick Carter (03:09)
No. No, I'm not going to
do that. I've just been sat here thinking, oh yeah, I should have done that before we started recording. Oh well.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (03:15)
well, next time. I too did not watch a lot of tennis. I've kind of been trying to take a break a little bit.
The one thing I did watch though was the Carlos Alcaraz documentary. Yes, that came out.
Nick Carter (03:25)
Yes, right.
So let's do a bit of a preview on that then. So what are your thoughts Anastasia on that documentary?
Anastasia - Ground Pass (03:36)
I think it was very interesting insight into, you know what it is, you watch it and then you really do remember he's only 21 years old. Like he is a child. He is so young.
Nick Carter (03:47)
He's
22 next week.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (03:50)
22 next week, but he's so young still. And I think that documentary really brought that out. He just wants to have fun. He just wants to do what 21 year olds do. And he just happens to be a phenomenal four time grand slam winning tennis player. So it really did show that duality a little bit and how he tries to manage that duality and the adults around him that
try and help him, you know, get there. I love the part because someone you don't hear about or see much on tour or interviewed as his mom. So it was so nice to like actually hear from her and how her concerns are just the happiness of her child, obviously. Like she could care less how well he did in tennis, which was really, really cool to see.
Nick Carter (04:40)
Yeah, and that's something that's interesting because they obviously did the Naomi Osaka documentary a couple of years ago now. And I think something that seems to stand out from that and this is the main takeaway as you find out a little bit more about their families and their home life as much as they will allow to be filmed. But I think that is definitely the kind of the takeaway from it. mean, in terms of like...
Anastasia - Ground Pass (04:57)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (05:03)
Is there anything that like, yeah, you're saying that about Alcaraz himself that we learned in watching it?
Anastasia - Ground Pass (05:10)
Yeah, I think that was really the biggest thing and realizing that he might just be someone who I think people have been sort of gathering as you watch him through his career is that he might just be someone who would just rather be happy and have a good life than be a 22, 25 Grand Slam champion, which is interesting to see because sometimes you just think athletes, you're just like.
laser focused and you want to win all the prizes. But it seems the way he functions is the reverse of that. And I don't want to go too much into it because once you are done watching, we are going to do like an episode where we talk about the whole documentary. But I liked it a lot. I like sports documentaries in general. And this was a fun one. So yeah.
Nick Carter (06:00)
Yeah, I definitely
think we could do we could break it down in detail maybe when I've had time to watch it maybe when other people have had a chance to watch it and we can discuss it but I wanted to do a spoiler free discussion because it's still relatively fresh out and I guess my main question is you know I know you're a documentaries person not everyone is would you still recommend it to anyone who maybe isn't as much of a documentaries person and
Anastasia - Ground Pass (06:14)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (06:27)
would you recommend it as a much watched for tennis fans?
Anastasia - Ground Pass (06:30)
Yes, totally for both of them. Because I think sometimes people's aversion, quote unquote, to documentaries is that it's too data heavy. It's too data driven. you know, there's so much you're trying to absorb. But with this, it's so much fun. Like, it's just fun. You know, the cameras were allowed to go to Carlos to his house and on his vacations and things like that. So.
you're almost just watching like a mini story. They're also not long. I think the longest episode is 44 minutes long. So you're not spending, and they're only three episodes. So you're not spending hours on a tedious documentary. And second, for tennis fans, mean, obviously the best part of it is having a Roger or Rafa sighting, which you get so much of.
You get, and there was this, okay, I will tell you one part of it, which was when Carlos was playing the Laver Cup, he had never really met or just talked to Roger until then. Like they had practiced before at Wimbledon years ago, but he talked about how he had never really just sort of like chatted with him and just talked to him. So during the Laver Cup, during one of his practices, which at the time we all saw photos of,
Roger came to say hello and to just like interact. You could just see he was a fan. He was just a tennis fan. He wasn't Carlos Alcaraz, know, grand slam winning champion, tennis player. He was just Carlos Alcaraz, the fan of Roger Federer. And it was the cutest thing. was, you know, his team was like, he's coming. He was like, you're just like, man.
Nick Carter (08:06)
I've
got to see this now because I think that's how exactly I would be if I was about to meet Roger Federer. So, okay, well, that's something to look forward to then from it. I think just to kind of a wider point off the back of that, because it's something that I think we may have talked a bit about on Grand Pass before. We tend to support the players just for being players and everything else like that.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (08:12)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (08:29)
What do you make of that mentality that Carlos seems to have based on this documentary that he's here to have fun, he's here to enjoy life, he's here to be in tennis because he loves it, and he's not here to win? Because I can imagine immediately, and I haven't seen much, I haven't seen any online reaction to it, really. ⁓ But I can imagine the reaction of some people would be that that's a sign of weakness. And we don't really go into the sort of that side of things when discussing the pod anyway, but...
Anastasia - Ground Pass (08:46)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Carter (08:55)
Maybe you can give your thoughts on that in your answers to why we don't discuss that kind of thing.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (09:00)
Well, because it, and I have actually seen some of that reaction online and I think it's actually really refreshing in just the human element of it that he is so, because, you know, even in any walk of life. So for example, if you take me and when I was 20 and coming up and trying to work, I was so,
much of a workaholic, because I was like, I have to get to this point at this time. you just kept going and going, and the years just kept going by and by. And for me, it wasn't until probably during COVID or after COVID where I sort of flipped my mentality a little bit to what Carlos is talking about when he's 22, that it's important to, yes, succeed.
win and do all of that, but I would just rather be happy as well in life than just losing time and youth and everything to just focus on this one thing, laser focus, and then not be happy doing it, you know, because it's tedious, it's hard. So I appreciated it of him saying it. And it's tough to talk about stuff like that on the pod, because I think
What we do is like, want to help people understand the sports better and also learn about the players who are in the sport. But at the same time, we don't want to put our own ideas and thoughts about those players on those players. I'd rather interview a player and they tell me what it was like in that match or how they feel or.
what they should do in their game. I'm like, I don't play tennis. I can't tell you what to do with your game and how to play it. I can just observe and see what's happening. So I think we try and make sure as we talk about players, it's more sort of informational, like, hey, this is this person. This is where they're from. This is what matches they're in and how they play and what we like about them ⁓ versus
Nick Carter (11:01)
Mm.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (11:02)
trying to say, well, you I really think Coco should fix her forehand. I don't know. You know, so that's kind of how we approach it.
Nick Carter (11:10)
And most of our listeners won't know either, to be honest. And so we're not, that's not what we're here for. We're here to talk about the tennis and be information. Yeah, we'll probably say how a match went or something along those lines. But yeah, I think, I don't think there is a right way to go about being a professional tennis player. I certainly have no right to have an opinion on that because I've never tried. In fact, I have a feeling that if I did try,
Anastasia - Ground Pass (11:13)
Exactly.
See ya.
Nick Carter (11:36)
I would have bombed out of the first local tournament I entered. So let's put some, I think we'd to have some perspective here. But I appreciate that some of the people who are listening will probably come across strong opinions online. I like the people who just want to have fun and enjoy it. And like, this is their job and this is what they get to do. And we heard a little bit about that from our professionals person.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (11:54)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (11:59)
which I won't spoil anymore, but it gives us a bit of insight into what makes a lot of players tick. So yeah, we have probably got a little bit off plan for how long we spent on that, but I did think that it was worth having a chat about the documentary and sort of the vague points that came out of it. And then we'll just talk about what we thought about it specifically later on.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (12:05)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I know, totally. So yeah, if you haven't seen the documentary series, definitely check it out. It's on Netflix everywhere. Here's my one note, because more than one person contacted me and were like, oh, I don't like the documentary because of the way it sounds. Like, what is this dubbing? And I was like, wait, what are you talking about? And
Check your settings on Netflix. This documentary is in Spanish. Carlos Alcaraz speaks Spanish. I'm really happy they did not make him speak English for this documentary because he definitely, you get his personality more. He's more comfortable speaking Spanish, so you get more out of it. But there is English dubbing, which I still haven't listened and I just refuse to.
Nick Carter (13:07)
I'm going say this now, I am going to watch this documentary in Spanish with English subtitles. Like that, because that just going to sound horribly and off. And I've done it before. I've watched the dubs and it just doesn't fit. I hate how the movement of the mouth doesn't fit the words. And the same when I watch Studio Ghibli films, I watch it in Japanese with the English with English subtitles because it just flows a lot better. Yeah.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (13:12)
Yes.
Yeah. That's just the way it's supposed to be.
Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. So don't, don't watch this please in the dubbed because a lot of people are like, really? And I was like, yes. You know, so watch it in Spanish with the English subtitles and yeah, you know, so I think actually Nick.
Nick Carter (13:32)
or not Japanese or Spanish, but...
Anastasia - Ground Pass (13:49)
we should switch up a little bit because we spent so much time on that and I love it. I love that we talked about it. We were supposed to this week talk about tennis trophies because the Madrid Open has this history of, and a lot of tournaments too, of just switching up their tennis trophies. So I thought, it would be really great to talk about this midweek of the Madrid Open. But I think maybe we save this topic.
to another time because there has been stuff going on in Madrid that I want to talk about. And maybe for our listeners to sort of help us prep for when we do talk about tennis trophies, if there are any tennis trophies that interest you and you would like us to talk about, send us because there are some very unique tennis trophies on tour. There are some beautiful ones and there's some, you know, special ones.
So let us know. We will park that topic for another time because
I kind of want to talk about the chaotic Madrid.
Nick Carter (14:46)
Okay, is it any more chaotic? First of all, chaotic on the men's side. The women's side, apart from today, where we lost a couple of relatively big names, has been pretty solid, apart from a couple of wobbles for people. But it's the men's side, and also Anastasia, it's not that much more chaotic than we saw in Indian Wells or Miami.
because this seems to be the world of tennis when Jannik Sinner's not playing.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (15:08)
Yes. Sinner, where are you? Are you coming back?
Nick Carter (15:12)
He'll be back. He's coming
back next week, Anastasia. He'll be back after our mini-pod.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (15:15)
Yay.
I think maybe all the men just miss Sinner on tour. They're like, where is he? We miss him. And it's been chaotic ever since. So yeah, let's start from the beginning because immediately we lost Carlos Alcaraz at this tournament. He suffered an injury in Barcelona during the finals, actually, that
So was kind of touch and go, like he didn't withdraw immediately. There was like a touch and go period, but then he finally announced that he had withdrawn from Madrid. And I don't know about you, Nick, but this part of the calendar for Carlos, I've always found to be one of his toughest because he and the thing about that is that he's Spanish. So there are a few very important Spanish tournaments that happen every single year.
that as the number one Spanish player, one of its biggest stars, it seems impossible for him to miss. And because of that, means if he was to play every single tournament this period, he would go back to back from Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, French Open. That is a lot of tennis in basically
a month and a half, pretty much?
Nick Carter (16:28)
More than that, I mean,
like what you've just listed there is essentially six consecutive weeks, week off, two more weeks. That's eight out of nine weeks you're playing. Add in Wimbledon and Queens, because he usually plays Queens Club in London. That's week off, so that's week 10. And 11th, then he's playing like nine out of 11 weeks, week off, nine out 12. It's 12 out of...
Anastasia - Ground Pass (16:37)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (16:53)
it's 11 out of 14 weeks once you finish Wimbledon. So that's crazy. I don't know why he plays Monte Carlo. I obviously he won Monte Carlo, but given historically, he's not done that well there. I don't know why he plays it because it's not mandatory. But yeah, I agree. Like, and it's, it's a tough one, because obviously all the Spanish, like all his sponsors are Spanish and is like he loves playing in Spain. He's his best when he's in Spain. I think he plays his best in Barcelona. So I think it's
Anastasia - Ground Pass (16:56)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Carter (17:20)
gutting to him that he's having to plan Madrid. I think he'd much rather that Rome and Madrid were the other way around in the calendar. And Madrid was the main warmup, but Rome is closer in condition, so it makes sense. But yeah, maybe that's something he has to take away and sort of learn about, because yeah, that's two consecutive Madrid's where he's being kind of disrupted by injury. And I mean, I guess the Barcelona tournament probably won't complain if all the Carlos fans descend on there.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (17:26)
Mmm.
Nick Carter (17:43)
they know they're to watch him if he's always going to be a question for Madrid but yeah I don't envy him being in that that position or the Spanish organizers because they basically base all their marketing around Carlos being there. mean Netflix has been all over the the stadiums.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (17:51)
Yeah.
Bright!
The stadiums and all the umpire chairs also have the Carlos Alcaraz documentary on the side of it. Like he is the face of the tournament. So it was definitely a big deal for him to withdraw. And it's a tough situation. I don't know what the solution is because I feel like, and maybe he kind of alternates when he does Monte Carlo, but I feel like Monte Carlo is such a, it's almost like Wimbledon in the sense of the historic.
nature of it. doesn't count as a required tournament, but it's such, think a lot of the players see it as this sort of like historic, beautiful, special and unique venue and tournament that they should attend. And the fact that he's never really done well at it might have been sort of a, he's either actually either not done well at it or not attended. So it's kind of like feel maybe he felt he had to do it, you know?
But then that just puts you between a rock and a hard place in terms of the rest of the calendar. Yeah. But yes, Carlos was not the only one to exit. He didn't play, but a few people lost first round and it's kind of...
Nick Carter (19:06)
we're doing injuries,
while we're doing injuries, it also has to be said that like, of the people were about to list, another of them pulled up due to injury and that was Holger Rune, the Barcelona champion. So both Barcelona finalists were affected by injury in Madrid. Holger Rune lost the first set against Flavio Cabolli and then pulled out. Was it Cabolli he was playing? Yeah, good. I knew he was playing Italian and I was like, I'm going to say the one that I remember and then doubted myself.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (19:26)
Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
Nick Carter (19:32)
Yeah, so that is something else to say, it's also taking that transition to also taking a toll on him. I think it's an indication of like a wider thing in terms of scheduling as a player in tennis. But I think it's probably worth putting out there that like two of these results, I'm sorry, even a result for Carlos didn't even try to play, are due to one factor, whereas the others are...
Anastasia - Ground Pass (19:48)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (19:53)
due to not necessarily performing well.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (19:55)
Right, right. So that's Novak, Felix Arthur Fils, all out in the first round. And again, you you think, is this the Sinner effect? Are they just truly missing their best friend, Jannik Sinner, and they're just waiting for him to come back on tour? But no, I think it's different things for all these players.
Nick Carter (20:15)
That probably means that Jack Draper is going
to win Madrid because apparently he practiced with Sinner before Madrid started and he is loving life and he's basically in all his interviews with British TV going Sinner is so lovely, he's brilliant and it's really unfortunate what happened. I really had a good time with him. Hey, if he's the one who's had the most recent contact with Jannik Sinner, that means he's winning Madrid.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (20:38)
You heard it here first, Nick predicting Jack Draper winning Madrid. And he has been playing well. Jack Draper has been really having a good year. But yeah, I think also the results of all of this is we have such an interesting, and here's the thing. Okay, there are two trains of thought here. One, ATP and disarray.
what's happening on the men's tour. It's so crazy. You know, the top tens changed, all this stuff. And for me at the same time, I think this is just a natural.
point of change at the ATP. They've had the loss of three of its most prominent players over the years in terms of Roger and Rafa retiring and Novak hasn't retired yet, but I would argue he's not the same player he was three or four years ago. So it's definitely going through a change. And I think this is just the normal evolution.
of the tour with such a change. I would say the WTA went through the exact same thing when Ash Barty left and Serena left and they just had to like sort of figure out what, who the top of the game was now. I personally love it. I don't like in general consistency in the sense of like tournament after tournament, it's the same three people winning. Believe it or not, it did get boring for me at
Square is just like, okay, same three people. So I actually like it. I don't know what you think about it, but I'm not on the sort of ATP in disarray bandwagon.
Nick Carter (22:10)
It's not in disarray at all. Also, let's face it, when you really think about it, it's about it's still always about Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Because, yeah, you're and it's just, you know, well, when they're around, it's a free for all. And that's the future of it. But yeah, it's a natural state of tennis. And I have no problem with there being more stories.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (22:19)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (22:31)
I have no problem with there being, hey, a lot more good players than they used to be. Because it's a sign that, yeah, when you get the high standard of professionalism that is in the sport now. So why is this a bad thing? Predictability is only interesting if you don't surprises. If you want, or if you've picked a side.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (22:43)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (22:54)
and you want that side to win all the time, or at least you have an idea of then, well, they're that good, they only lose to a few people. So that is Jannik Sinner right now. It may well be Carlos Alcaraz at some point, but I don't see it's necessarily bad for the sport. I guess it's like, the only downside is there's too many names to learn potentially.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (23:15)
No.
Nick Carter (23:15)
That's literally the only downside as well. I don't know who that is. That's someone like, why can't you just have the same person that I can just remember? Which is how a lot of us get into the sport, right? I got into Formula One because I remember the name Michael Schumacher over and over again. And by the way, I was, this is like when I was like seven, eight, nine years old. Tennis around at the same time. if you are sort of six, seven year old Nick, who are the tennis players? The only tennis players I could name to you.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (23:32)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Carter (23:40)
with Venus Williams, I didn't even know she had a sister at that point, Pete Sampras, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski And that's because that's what all the media coverage would always show me. it's kind of like, I think that's the only potential downside is, but I don't know who that is. Well, good news. That's why we're here. Because we can tell you about who this person is. So always listen to Groundpass before watching a tournament and we got you covered.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (23:57)
Yeah. Exactly.
and then we got you covered. Before we move over to the women's side to just talk about what's been happening there, just wanted to mention Alejandro Davidovich-Fokina He lost a very tight match, three set match to Alexander Zverev pretty much just before we came on, but he's been playing so well this year. I actually wanted to just look really quickly on where he is in the race. And guys, when I say the race,
Just to explain a little bit. So there are two rankings obviously just the top 10 of the world that we we talk about But there is the ranking for the race which is a year-long ranking that decides who gets to go to the finals of either the ATP or the WTA. Yes, Nick because you can explain it better
Nick Carter (24:49)
So just to clarify
that a bit, the ranking is based on
performance over the last 12 months. So the rankings currently are based on back to as of record, like the 27th of April, 2024. The race is based on performance going back to January the 1st of 2025. So it's year to date as opposed
Anastasia - Ground Pass (24:57)
Yes.
Yeah, right.
Nick Carter (25:11)
previous 12 months.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (25:12)
the previous 12 months exactly. And currently Alejandro Davidovich-Fokina is 10th in the race. If you want to see kind of a snapshot, this is actually a really good idea. If you want to see a snapshot of who's been doing well so far in the year since January or since the beginning of the season, you want to take a look at the rankings for the race. And ADF is 10th. He has had
Nick Carter (25:18)
⁓
Anastasia - Ground Pass (25:38)
a pretty good season so far. And it's really nice to see. He almost got the win there in the second set, feel like, but it's Alexander Zverev He's really great in these conditions. He was gonna be a tough out either way. But yeah, just wanted to mention him. He was the last Spaniard standing in singles, and now there are no Spaniards in the singles at the Madrid Open. Yeah.
Nick Carter (26:01)
Yeah,
the Madrid people are really annoyed that Carlos got injured right now. Not with him, just with fate.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (26:05)
Yes, yes they are.
The
situation, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that is, that was the men's side. It's still ongoing, obviously. For the women, it was a, you know, I wanna say a scare of a start for Iga and Coco. I feel like the women's matches started with a like, whoop, a little jump scare.
Nick Carter (26:25)
Yes.
Yes, Iga Swatiek had a rematch with Alex Eala which everyone was looking forward to. And then Eala won the first set doing more or less what she'd been doing in Miami to Iga And then Iga made the second set a bit more of a battle and figured, managed to figure out what she needed to do and did what top players do and kind of go, no, I'm just going to make you really, really hard to beat me and then figured out how to play better.
by the end of the match. And that's essentially what happened there. It's just unfortunate for Alex, Iga got better as the match went on. And that is the opposite for what you want to happen when you're playing a top ranked player. Especially someone like Iga who loves it on clay and has followed up with a really good win over Linda Nosková yesterday. And then Coco got bageled in set one against Dayana Yastremka And I can imagine that was like panic buttons.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (26:54)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Carter (27:19)
for anyone who was a Coco fan at that point, Coco immediately walked in, turned the alarm off and just got down to business by winning the second set 6-2. But it was a bit touch and go in the decider. It was a bit of a close one in the decider, 7-5 in the end. For Coco, it was a really tough match. But yeah, that was... But, you know, they held on and that's the thing is that like these players, although we can say that they...
they aren't doing their best right now. They can still win scrappy matches and that's what makes them so good. And I think in tennis, no matter how you win, just get the win. And the player, and there's just some players who are just really, really good at winning matches. Iga Swiatek is one example, Coco Gauff is another. mean, Aryna Sabalenka has not exactly been scared in the same way, but she's lost a set to Elise Mertens and...
She had a bit of a wobble in the first set against Anna Blenková. I don't think she's looking super confident either. I would watch out for Mira Andreeva right now, because she's looking like she's loving being back at Madrid. But that's kind of all the big picture stuff. But that's what's going on in the women's tournament. We have lost a couple of names. Jessica Pegula lost earlier today to Uchijima.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (28:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Nick Carter (28:31)
who's a player I've been kind of keeping an eye on her rising up the rankings. She is Japanese. And it's kind of vying with Osaka for like being the number one Japanese player at the moment. So that's a good win for Uchijima. That's probably a bit of a breakthrough for her. And then Maria Sakkari just crushed Jasmine Paolini after being pretty much nowhere for about a year. She gets back together with her old coach, Tom Hill, and looks herself again.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (28:52)
Yeah.
It's kind of crazy. She literally up until the Madrid Open had not won back-to-back matches. She was barely winning matches in the first round anyway. And here she is, like looking like the old Maria Sakkari I think I only just realized actually, I think she's playing doubles as well with Madison Keys, which I didn't realize, but I just saw a score line come up and it looks like they're doing well in doubles.
Nick Carter (29:17)
in it.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (29:23)
Yeah, go Maria Sakkari. Some other players, at least one player that I noticed on the women's side who I like to follow, like to see what she's up to. Emma Raducanu came into this tournament after not doing much on clay so far. she is at the tourn... Well, she was. She won her first match but lost the second round. She's at the tournament with Mark Petchey
who is someone who's coached her before. Apparently the partnership is still informal, but possibility of it becoming more formal and he coming in as her coach, which would be interesting.
Nick Carter (29:54)
I'm going to clarify on that because she's actually talked about this. So Mark Petchy is coaching Emma when he doesn't have commentary commitments. So he's working with her when he's not doing commentary, which he's still doing with Tennis Channel. And that's his number one priority. So it's literally just as and when he has the time or he has the space, he'll go and spend some time with her. But she's saying actually, that's working for her really, really well.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (30:03)
Ooh.
Yeah.
Okay.
Nick Carter (30:19)
because she's discovering that actually she doesn't respond well to a lot of structure. Some structures good for her, like she needs that, but not like complete regiment rented. And I think that's probably been the source of why she's fallen out with a couple of her coaches. So it just doesn't click and she's enjoying.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (30:35)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (30:40)
taking a bit more of a relaxed approach to her tennis. It's paying off because she's been playing quite well. She's had played two pretty good matches in Madrid. But that's just to say that's what's going on with Mark Petchey. He's going to be around, but on a part-time basis. And everyone seems to be kind of happy with that.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (30:54)
Right.
Yeah. And the thing is, I love that and bringing it a little bit to what we talked about in the beginning about the Carlos Alcaraz documentary and how we approach covering tennis players. It's like, everyone's different. Not everyone has to do the things the way it's supposed to be done or the way we think it's supposed to be done. know, everyone's allowed to have their own path. And this is her path. This is how she has chosen to
go through being a professional tennis player, let her do it. She's a grand slam champion. So it's, I like to see her playing well and happy on court and happy with the situation that she has. And it's not on me or you to be like, well, actually, I think.
Nick Carter (31:41)
No, definitely
not because again, we've not done this ourselves. And again, this is people you click with people you don't. It's the same with Sakkari. She's like, even if Tom Hill has limitations as a coach, they work well together. Like personality wise, we had a little bit of that with when we had Abigail on the pod of like, she's there for moral support, if anything else with a few of the Brits and actually has that see some benefits.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (31:44)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Carter (32:05)
Also to anyone, by the way, if anyone listening to this sees anything online about Emma Raducanu fluking that Grand Slam, that is complete BS. I am not going to put an explicit tag on this podcast, but it is complete BS. And you should ignore that because you cannot fluke winning seven matches in a row against top 100 players.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (32:26)
No, you cannot. And she came through qualifying, so.
Nick Carter (32:29)
Yes, because you want 10 matches in a row. like,
what more do you want? Like that's, that's really tough to do. So yeah.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (32:35)
Yeah.
So yeah, that's pretty much what's going on on the women's side. Madison Keys is doing well, going through her matches and stuff. But a player who went out in the first round, very surprisingly, I think, at least for some people, and also will then bring us to our next topic, which is something I think maybe people don't realize what's going on, is what happens in the second week.
of these two week tournaments to the players who aren't playing? Are they just sitting at home? Are they training? Like, what are they doing? What are they doing, guys? But Naomi Osaka lost in her first round match, which was a little tough, I think, even for her. She posted to social media insinuating as such. And it's kind of like, you you saw her training in Paris really early. So I think people were maybe expecting.
you know, a big run or whatever, but then she loses in the first round. And, and you kind of think, wow, so if you lose as a tennis player early in a two week tournament, which most of these masters now are two week tournaments, what do you do, especially on a surface like clay tennis in general, I think personally benefits from rhythm. It benefits from playing consistently and you know, maybe not, you know,
obviously not every single day, but just having some sort of rhythm in your matches and play. And what do you do if in your first tournament on a surface, you lose early? And Naomi, with some other players that we're gonna mention, took a wild card to Challenger. Or I guess Nick, it's a WTA 125, correct?
Nick Carter (34:13)
Yeah, 125K.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (34:14)
Yes, so I was looking for the name of it and I apologize for my pronunciation. It's really bad. But it's, I, you know, we just don't. But it's the WTA 125 Le Open, de Saint-Malo, Malo? Saint-Malo? Yep, yep, we will.
Nick Carter (34:21)
We don't speak French guys.
Le Pen
Anastasia - Ground Pass (34:35)
Anyone who can, my goodness, okay, by the way, because I will 100 % every single time take a correction. And the loveliest person on Instagram, they follow us. Their Instagram handle is court satisfaction. And they follow us on Instagram and they're actually currently at the Madrid Open right now. I was going to maybe ask them if they could send in a voice memo.
maybe for our next episode to just tell us like what it was like. But they listened to the mini pod I did talking about the tournament in Portugal. And I'm not going to even try and pronounce it right now because it's much more complicated, but I didn't know how to pronounce the name. they were so nice to first of all, not only listen to the podcast, thank you.
but they sent me a little voice memo with the correct pronunciation. And I was like, thank you. So if, I mean, please feel free if you guys know the correct pronunciations of stuff and we say it wrong, I will take it. I would rather pronounce things correctly than kind of botch it. But she took a wild card to that tournament and.
Nick Carter (35:27)
you
We have this before.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (35:47)
I've been seeing this trend happening, Nick, where it's like in the second week of these Masters events, they're usually now scheduled either, basically lower ranked tournaments, either 250s or challengers or WTA 125, 75s, all of that, in the second week to give these players an opportunity to sort of get some match play. So for example, FAA who lost first round,
He is also going to Portugal to play in the Estoril Challenger and also João Fonseca who lost yesterday to Tommy Paul. He got to the second round, but still he clearly wants some match play.
Nick Carter (36:27)
And it's not that weird either because I think we've talked about this before where the same thing happens at Indian Wells with Phoenix Challenger like that second week and you get some pretty big names showing up there. It's not every Challenger. I don't think it really happens during Grand Slams.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (36:33)
Yes.
No, yeah, that's the one
thing it doesn't really happen, yeah.
Nick Carter (36:45)
But like now we're getting these two week, 1000 events. We're going to see it more often with Madrid, maybe with Rome, depending like how people feel about being too close to the French. I'd be interested to see if they do it with the Canada Cincinnati double. Although I think because of the way that schedule with it kind of running into each other, like in the middle of a week, I don't think people are going to do that with Canada, maybe Cincinnati, but that relies on them potentially losing in the first round. But certainly with these early two weekers in the first half of the year.
Yeah, definitely have a look at that. See what challenges they end up facing. It'll be easy to see if any clay court challenger regularly picks up because Estoril is not going to be a challenger next year. It's going back onto the main tour. ⁓ Kind of in the summer clay court swing, I think. So that's one thing to bear in mind, but definitely I think there'll be some like smaller French clay court events that probably going to make do with it. Like the Saint-Malo 125k is probably...
Anastasia - Ground Pass (37:22)
Right. Yeah.
Nick Carter (37:38)
absolutely loving life right now that they've got Naomi Osaka
Anastasia - Ground Pass (37:41)
Right, right. And that's also for you as an audience who are watching. If you're wondering, you're sort of like, my goodness, I would love to watch Naomi Osaka play right now. Or, you know, I want to watch Joao Fonseca If you're in Brazil, like all those things, they're playing next week. So you don't have to wait to Rome or anything like that. They're playing next week and it's free to watch. We keep saying this. It's free to watch. You can watch all the WTA Challenger level tournaments on WTA Unlocked.
and you can watch ATP Challenger tournaments on their website. They have like a stream they do and now you can watch it on tennis TV. So it seems these streams are also gonna be coming to TennisChannel I haven't yet watched the tennis TV versions, but apparently on the tennis TV versions, they're gonna have sort of more camera angles and things like that. I'm guessing they will probably be on their free tier, which is T2.
which you can watch for free in so many places. I'll leave all the links in description, but just for fans who want to watch their favorites when they're out early at a Masters, some of them are playing tournaments, so check them out.
Nick Carter (38:50)
And there's
other reasons to, you know, yeah, support those kind of challenges anyway. Bit of breaking news, I've actually now bought a ticket to go to the final of the Ilkley Challenger that's happening in June. So I'm gonna go watch that. I'm in the area anyway. thought, you know what, I'm gonna go do that. And that one tends to pick up some young up and comers. I was actually looking at this the day, like, oh.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (39:06)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (39:15)
I wonder who I could potentially watch. And this is like a massive tangent, but I wanted to share this with you, Anastasia. if you went to Ilkley in 2016, you'd have seen a young Daniel Medvedev before his breakthrough. If you went to Ilkley in 2017, you'd have seen Alex De Minaur and Taylor Fritz, like baby De Minaur and baby Fritz.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (39:34)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (39:36)
Jack Draper in 2018. Like that's how far back you've got to go. Like they had David Goffin and Richard Gasquet last year. In 2018, you could have seen Anna Kalinsaya, Ons Jabeur, Belinda Bencic and Bianca Andrescu. And that was before a lot of them were breaking through as they were breaking through. So just sort of reasons to be, to kind of go to these events. Like don't just wait to see if a big player signs up.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (39:53)
Right.
Nick Carter (40:02)
go because you never know who you're watching, whether who you're watching will become a big player. That's kind of my, my kind of plug there. But yeah, and now you're up to speed with what's happening next week as well as we kind of wrap up the show. It's Madrid, San Melo and Estoril.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (40:08)
Yeah.
Yes, exactly. Those are such great points you made, Nick, because, yeah, don't wait till, you know, Andy Murray's showing up at a Challenger near you. Go, you never know what baby player you're seeing now that you're going to be watching on TV win a Grand Slam. So definitely try and also because there's so many Challenger level events, there is probably one near you.
You might not think about, there is probably, I bet you, one near you, just look it up and you'll find some really high level tournaments that you can attend. Another plug for our Meet the Professionals episode because they talked about it, about that there as well. One quick, yes, yeah.
Nick Carter (41:00)
challenges and up and comers Do you want to
mention what just happened in a challenger yesterday?
Anastasia - Ground Pass (41:06)
Yes, yes. So yesterday and you know, full disclosure, I have not followed this tournament, but I just think it's really great, especially coming from an area that doesn't produce a lot of tennis players that you hear about in sort of the more sort of wider audience. But there's a challenger happening, actually two of them back to back. in Cote d'Ivoire, which is in Africa. And
one of their local players has made it to the finals of the event, which he is the first male tennis player on the ATP from Africa to make it to the finals of a challenger event. And that is a big, big thing. He is a young up and comer. Again, apologies for mispronouncing his name because he doesn't yet have the little like...
sound button on the ATP website, but hopefully, you know, from this sort of run he's made, maybe we can get him to pronounce his name and we can put that on the ATP website. ATP, I hope you're listening. But from just reading it, and I will also put this in the show notes so you can see it, it's He is a 22 year old from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast.
And he is in the final of the Cote d'Ivoire II Challenger. And I think that's really great. I love to see when players come out of these countries that don't get as much representation on the ATP tour and wishing him the best in the final. I'll actually be watching it. I will watch the final there. He's going to be playing against
Aziz Dougaz who is the number one seed from Tunisia at this challenger. And yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be hopefully an interesting watch. And, know, I hope this, because again, especially for local audiences, it's exposure like this. It's a player like this that helps encourage the younger generation to maybe pick up a racket and play the sport.
Nick Carter (43:08)
said.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (43:08)
So that is the episode this week, guys. You might be thinking, wait a second, how are you leaving us without a play of the fortnight? It is the fortnight and we're supposed to pick one technically this week, we just, slight problem.
Nick Carter (43:23)
We have a slight problem guys. Well, a couple of slight problems.
Two problems. One is that, you know, full disclosure, we've not had time to watch a lot of tennis between the two of us these last couple of weeks. The other problem is a lot of the players who have been doing noteworthy runs are big players, like well-known players. And so like our whole thing of like, we'll go see this person on the ground pass and it's really hard to pick out someone that you definitely see on a ground pass and not on a stadium.
that you know who they are. So, yeah, that's kind of the challenge that we've had this week on both the men's side and the women's side, despite all the quotes chaos on the men's side. So that's the situation we've kind of found ourselves in with it. And also, it's difficult doing it in the middle or just sort of in the early rounds of a tournament where you haven't seen the end of the story yet.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (43:59)
Yeah.
Nick Carter (44:15)
And that's also the challenge of like, okay, well, what did they do? Like, how do they impress? Like, I could go with Uchijima who beat Pegula but I want to see, you know, what she does in the fourth round now. So that's kind of where I'm at with picking my player for fortnight
Anastasia - Ground Pass (44:29)
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think we talked about this early before we started recording is like, we don't want to fake it. We don't want to just pick someone just to pick someone and fill the requirement. We want to actually make sure that this is someone that you should go see on a ground pass. Like we want to tell their story and, you know, help promote their tennis and them and, you know, give you a good reason why to go see them on a ground pass. So.
just like you said, you want to see the end of that story. I could have picked the baby Cerundolo brother, but I haven't really seen the end of his story, really. ⁓ But yeah. And he just lost Daniel Medvedev. So maybe not this time, baby Cerundolo Maybe on the next clay court tournament. Show me something. If you show me something, then I'll make you the player of the fortnight, okay?
Nick Carter (45:05)
It's just lost a down your mouth quite substantially.
I tell you what, you might
have a candidate in a minute because as we're recording this, Benjamin Bonzi has won the first set against Taylor Fritz 6-4.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (45:25)
Claylor, Claylor.
What's happening Claylor? This is his first Event back from injury. He's been suffering this year with a little bit of an oblique I think you call it your oblique injury in his ab So yeah, so no player of the fortnight for you this week, but we will be back. Maybe you'll get one During the mini pod which is coming Next week actually looking at the date Nick. I don't think we have a mini pod
Nick Carter (45:51)
No, we don't. I've
accidentally promised it and then realized, no, because A, that's when our Meet Professionals episode comes out and B, I'm actually literally in the middle of nowhere when we're supposed to record it. even if I brought my recording equipment with me, we wouldn't get internet. So...
Anastasia - Ground Pass (46:09)
No.
Nick Carter (46:11)
If something significant happens in Madrid that is we think we need to put something out about as a mini pod, Anastasia could cover it, guess, because let's face it, I only just roll up here and turn on my camera and talk nonsense for an hour. Anastasia actually does all the hard work. So we literally wouldn't be here without her. So how it's going to go.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (46:23)
You
We try. It's a team effort.
Nick Carter (46:35)
So
yeah, that's the situation is mini pod if needed, essentially, but meet the threshold worth listening for.
Anastasia - Ground Pass (46:39)
Exactly. you know,
yes, no, totally. So next week actually is a meet the professionals episode and then we will be back with a full episode in the following week. Again, you know the drill. If you need any breaking news, we're on social media on all the platforms. So follow us there and you will get the news as it comes. All the fun stories and the things happening on tour.
If you're listening to this podcast on Podcasts app of your choice, please give us a five star rating. Leave us a comment. We love that. Send us a voice memo of how to pronounce the challenger that's happening in France. That would be really, really great if you could do that for me. That would be awesome.
Otherwise we will see you in a couple of weeks. Nick, have fun in the middle of nowhere, I guess.
Bye guys.
