Wimbledon 2025 Round 1 Recap: Upsets, Fashion Wins, and the Return of the Curfew

Welcome to the Wimbledon 2025 Round 1 recap from Ground Pass—your go-to tennis podcast for stories beyond the scoreboard.

The first round of this year’s Championships wasted no time delivering drama. From early exits by top seeds to fresh kit debuts and emotional goodbyes, Wimbledon 2025 has already thrown us into the deep end. In this episode, Anastasia is joined by guest co-host Ian Modul from 40 Love Tennis to break it all down—while Nick checks in with a voice note from the All England Club.

🟢 Major Upsets

The seeds are not safe. Jessica Pegula, Qinwen Zheng, and Alexander Zverev all crashed out in Round 1, flipping both draws on their heads. Meanwhile, lesser-known names like Elisabetta Cocciaretto, Benjamin Bonzi, and Victoria Mboko stepped up and delivered memorable performances.

🎾 Taylor Fritz & the Curfew Returns

Fritz’s five-set comeback against Mpetshi Perricard was one of the standout matches of the round—but it also reignited the long-running Wimbledon curfew debate. We discuss how the overnight suspension affected the match and what the rule means for the rest of the tournament.

👗 Wimbledon Kits: Hits & Misses

It wouldn’t be Ground Pass without a little fashion talk. We go deep on this year’s standout looks, including the much-talked-about Adidas kits and Jessica Pegula’s iconic walk-on fit.

👋 Petra Kvitova Says Goodbye

Two-time champion Petra Kvitova played her final Wimbledon match, closing an incredible chapter in grass court history. We reflect on her legacy and what her presence has meant to the tournament.

🎙️ Listen to the Episode

If you missed any of the Round 1 action or just want our take on the highlights, tune into the full episode—available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you listen.

👉 Listen to the episode here.

TRANSCRIPT

Anastasia (00:00)

Hello everyone, welcome to our bonus Wimbledon episodes. We are coming to you at the end of every round of Wimbledon, this fun Grand Slam that we're going through. There is a lot to talk about. Round one is over. Welcome, ground passers, and welcome to our special guest, Nick.

was at Wimbledon today, so he's not able to join me tonight because he's still in London and he's with his mom. So we're just gonna let him have his personal time and do that. But I'm joined by the one and only Ian Mondul of 40Love. How long has it been, Ian? It's been a while since you've been on.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (00:40)

Yeah, I know I feel cheated on. You've had other people on to talk about tennis fashion that aren't me. No, it's yeah, it's been a bit, but I'm happy to be back. honestly, I don't think we could have planned this any better with the chaotic first round that we had at Wimbledon. There's definitely no shortage of things to talk about. So.

Anastasia (00:56)

I mean, here's hoping we can keep this to reasonable time, but I've already prepped all of our listeners. It's been chaotic in round one. So we're just gonna go for it, and hopefully we won't create a three hour long episode, but I love that you're here too, because specifically for Wimbledon, I didn't think there'd be any fashion stuff to talk about. It's Wimbledon, they all wear white. Like what could we possibly chat about? There is a lot to talk about as well.

in that section. So what are we hitting on today? I mean, in general, what these episodes are, I kind of call them are TLDW, Too Long Didn't Watch. So we're here to break it all down for you, what you missed. And if you really missed anything, have you been online lately? Because Wimbledon has been chaotic, but we're going to get to all of the upsets, all of the matches, all of the fashion.

of round one and there has been a lot of it. So stay tuned.

Okay, so it's really funny that the theme, I think of round one of Wimbledon is upset because that was the exact same thing in Roland Garros. Like remember Roland Garros like first round, he was like, where did Fritz go? Where did Medvedev go? Where did Kostyuk go? And I feel like we're repeating it, but to the next level.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (02:06)

Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, it's funny that you said that I had the same thought and I really I know it was only three, four weeks ago, but I couldn't remember the start to Roland Garros. But I had this feeling of deja vu today where I was just like, wait, we've been here before. Where why is there so much instability in these early rounds? I think for a while it's been, you know, the draws come out and I think people make a bigger deal about the draws. I just think the talent pool of players has just gotten.

Anastasia (02:29)

Mm-hmm.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (02:40)

so much better that you get these really incredible first round matches. And it's usually two players that I don't want to see have to eliminate one or the other. You you want the best for both of them. I wouldn't say that's the case for this tournament. There weren't too many matchups where I was like, you know, why does this person have to play this person this round? It was just just carnage today. Carnage today, carnage yesterday.

And here we are again. Yeah, we're through round one and you're kind of now I was thinking about it with Roland Garros. You you had this little bit of a lull for a couple rounds because round one was so rough or round two was so rough. You had like a little bit of a lull before the big seeded players started to meet again. So yeah, we kind of have the same thing happening here.

Anastasia (03:19)

Yeah.

Yeah, it's probably gonna happen again. And just to check in, because I posted on the first day how I watch round one of Grand Slams, because it's a lot. There, you know, it's a lot of matches to get through in two days that it's almost impossible to catch everything. You're gonna miss something. But I do the whole like ESPN multi-screen boxes on my Apple TV. Do you do the same?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (03:47)

yeah, I mean we were laughing a little just before hopping on the podcast. I feel like it definitely contributes to my ADHD. Yeah, there's just so much happening at once and I don't even know if it's effective putting four matches on on the screen. I don't know that I really watch any of them that intently and I usually focus in on one anyways. But yeah, I do the same thing because there's just so many things to watch.

Anastasia (04:07)

Yeah, I pick the one because obviously it's four matches on a screen, but you obviously are not getting all of the sound from it because that would be crazy. And we're crazy enough. But what I do is like the match I want to focus on, that's where I put the sound on and then everything else. just like glance at it from, you know, from time to time. I do want to say though, because I had not realized that this is a feature of the Apple TV. Do you have an Apple TV as well or no?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (04:20)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. wait, that's just that's just because of Apple TV.

Anastasia (04:33)

Yeah.

I did not realize this because a lot of people online, you I posted my thing. was like, my goodness, show me your setup. And I got a lot of questions of people asking me, wait, how do I get to the four screen thing? And I was like, I don't know, it's this button here. And then you just do that. And a lot of people was like, I don't see that on my Roku or I don't see that on my Google TV or like all that thing, all that stuff. And I was like, I had no idea that this was an Apple TV thing. So if you're listening to this and you can get the multi-screen,

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (04:49)

Yeah.

Anastasia (05:04)

without Apple TV, please let us know, send us a message and stuff. Because I want to let people know, I've only had the Apple TV and that's how I get it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (05:13)

Yeah, well, I didn't realize that. guess we take that for granted. But yeah, I have Apple TV. Early rounds you do this, you know, maybe as the rounds get like later on, you really want to experience the match and kind of, you know, feel like you're in it. So you do a little bit more switching back and forth. But these early rounds, yeah, I mean, there's no great way to do it. We've talked about this before. I work in tennis, so I'm following this and I'm covering it for work too. like.

Anastasia (05:25)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (05:37)

I've definitely sometimes had the TV up, the laptop on my lap, and the phone in my hand, and I'm talking to people on my phone, and I've got something happening on my computer, and then I've got multiple matches happening on my TV, and any normal person, if they would walk into my living room during that situation, you'd be like, okay, this guy is absolutely insane.

Anastasia (05:56)

It's a

little bit of the beautiful mind situation that we've got going. If anyone can help us streamline this or help us a bit to focus, please send us a message as well, because that would be helpful. But let's get into the chaos, because it was absolute carnage, as we've been saying. Someone sent us a message, like a reply to one of our posts on threads, Kate, who follows us on threads. Hi, Kate.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (05:59)

You

Thank

Anastasia (06:23)

But Kate goes, grass is glass. It shatters egos. I have just, I think it's like the, it's the best way to explain what round one has been like. But it was absolute chaos to start. It's funny because when I first sat down to watch round one, grab my cup of coffee, I started with a Svitolina match. And Svitolina on day one,

ran through her match, like she was the seed, it was beautiful, like it was straight sets, no problems. So that's what I was my first entry into Wimbledon, and it all went downhill from there. What was your first match of Wimbledon? Do you remember?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (07:01)

Ooh, man, what was the first

match that I watched? I'm gonna have to look, but I do wanna shout out that poem that Kate wrote is great. I think that's kind of what makes Wimbledon so unique and so special is the grass does kind of act as like an equalizer. ⁓ There's very few grass court specialists anymore. I think you've seen on the women's side, you over the last few years, just the

Anastasia (07:16)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (07:24)

I don't want to say randomness because there's been some really incredible performances like Von Drosipha and Krachikova, you know, but those were unexpected, right? Like those were people that, you know, nobody expected to have in the finals, let alone win them. you know, Jess Pegula who we'll talk about, I'm sure she said that going into this tournament,

that it felt like the most open it's ever been because you have the women at the top of the game who don't have success on grass yet. And you just look at the history of how the last few years have gone and there's just so few grass specialists that.

Yeah, I mean, these great, great top players of the game right now who aren't even making it through round one. And you know that that's not gonna be the case on every other surface. know, that doesn't happen on clay or it doesn't happen on hard courts. So first match that I watched, let's see, I did, so I flew back Sunday night from a work event and I got in at two in the morning and I thought to myself, well, man, just start at 3 a.m.

Anastasia (08:16)

Might as well stay up.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (08:16)

Should I just do

this? I was like, no, I can't do that to myself. But the thought did cross my mind. So I do want to put that out there. There was a few matches that I really would have loved to stay up to see, but I couldn't do it. So for me, you're on the East Coast, matches start a little bit earlier. For me, I'm probably, a lot of the first matches are ending. And I think, what did I turn on first on Monday?

I I might've woke up, I woke up and I started watching Fonseca Fernley because I think Fernley's a unique story, know, TCU college player. I follow a lot of college tennis and he's had a great rise over the last year. And then Fonseca is, you know, hyped up as if he is the next Alcaraz and by all means he deserves the hype. So that was the one that I was most excited to see was how was Fonseca gonna deal with playing against a local kid.

Anastasia (08:44)

Okay.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (09:04)

who was going to have support where Fonseca is used to having his, you know, loud, boisterous Brazilian crowd. So I wanted to see how that was going to go. That was the first one that I turned into. It didn't turn out to be that amazing of a match, but I also had Fonini and Alcaraz on, you know, which in my mind, I'm thinking, right, like this is where we start, right? This is where, imagine my reaction waking up and seeing that Fonini won a set, first of all. I was like, what is...

Anastasia (09:09)

Yeah.

Okay, let's get into it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (09:30)

But I didn't think anything of it. I said, okay, Alcaraz will get under control. Yeah, I that was off the rails. So that's that was my waking up. I was like, what is going on? Yeah, anyways, I'll let you hop in here because yeah, Alcaraz Fonini What was that?

Anastasia (09:35)

Yeah.

What was that? But I think with my sort of how I was running through the day, you I watched this Fidelina match, which was at the same time as Daria Kasatkina And it was, you know, I say, I started so chill and with these beautiful kits, which we're going to get into, I tell you we're going to get into it. And it was super chill. And then all of a sudden here is Sonay Kartel defeating Ostapenko So that was my intro into Wimbledon.

didn't get into the Carlos Alcaraz match because personally, there's just so much going on in round one and Carlos Alcaraz playing Fabio Fonini it's his last Wimbledon, he's supposed to be retiring this year. I was like, you know what, I'ma catch the highlights. It's gonna be fine. So I go through my day and I'm watching Ostapenko, Medvedev is in trouble, Tsitsipas is laying on his stomach getting

back massages, it is all going off. And I think, wait, how's that Carlos Alcaraz match doing? They should be onto the second match, right? On center at this point, because I'm thinking that match is over. And what's the next match on center? They're on the second set. And I'm like, what is going on? And then that's when I started tuning in there. But before we get into the Medvedev and Tsitsipas like, what?

What in the sort of, I pod sometimes with Mitch Michals, hi Mitch, of the Tennis Channel, we call, we text each other back and forth, and we call Alcaraz our little drummer boy, because he just, you know, he lose focus and he just goes drumming away to the other side of town, and you're like, come back, focus in. But how much of that match did you watch? Because I was completely in and out of it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (11:15)

Hmm.

Anastasia (11:27)

not really expecting it to go that way. So I wasn't paying attention to it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (11:33)

Yeah, and if you woke up and you started watching and you thought, that's not what I need to tune into, you're probably right. You're probably right to think that way because there's no reason why you would think that that would have turned into the five match, a five set match that it did. So I had it on and I was toggling between that and other matches. Yeah, I mean, I thought that Alcaraz was kind of over this.

yips that he gets against players that he should be beating. I the way that he played in Roland Garros and the way he's been playing over the grass court season, just seemed like to me he'd gotten past that. you're calling him the little drummer boy because he can be a little all over the place sometimes. And yeah, I thought he was past that. And obviously not. mean, to Fonini I read a quote from him that he said when he got to the locker room that he cried because.

He didn't think that he was capable of putting on a five set match against the second best or best player in the entire world at his age. credit to Fonini and he deserves the credit for that match. But Alcaraz also just looked like a mess. looked like the Alcaraz that we've seen pop up from time to time where you're like, come on man, let's put it together here. Like you are.

Anastasia (12:23)

Aww.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (12:43)

Maybe you might have a higher ceiling than Jannik Sinner. A lot of people would think that. You may be considered the greatest, the best player in tennis right now. But yeah, he finds these performances where you're like, is going on? The serve's not there. He's firing shots long and he can't find his touch on his groundstrokes. And you're just like, what am I? Is this sloppy? It's not fun to watch. So when I was kind of in and out of it, every time I would tune in, I was just like, not.

Anastasia (13:04)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (13:08)

loving what I was watching. And then he just kind of throws away that fourth set because it got away from him. It was just weird. It really was very, very weird. Wasn't the best match of the day, that's for sure.

Anastasia (13:18)

Yeah,

and the thing is on ground pass, you we get a lot of like new fans to the sport who are just trying to learn it and stuff. And I can just imagine if you're coming from like the French Open, Roland Garros, and you see this kid and he this epic five set match and he wins and you you heard that, this is his fifth Grand Slam. Like he's been doing this for a while. He goes to Queens, he wins the tournament. You're excited.

You're getting in there and I just want to tell you, your roll. If you're out here trying to be a Carlos Alcaraz fan, you have to be in it for the good times and the very bad times because he has no middle. There is no sort of like run of the mill. You know, I'm just going to play a straight up and down match. Everything's hunky dory. You have to be here for all the emotions, all the highs and but I also think that's what makes him such an exciting player because

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (13:48)

You ⁓

Anastasia (14:11)

He plays with a lot of feeling. And I think he talked about in press that he was super nervous, that he thought, I'm defending champion. I'm two time, two time defending champion. I know that I have to open center court on Monday. This is not new, but he still says he gets nervous. And as someone like him who plays with emotions is still super young.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (14:16)

Yeah.

Anastasia (14:34)

You know, I think we also just tend to forget that he's still young and unlike someone like Sinner, who I think matured very early. Yes, Sinner is like a year or two older or something like that. But I think Sinner in general is a little bit more mature. Carlos is younger, plays more with feeling, has a lot of feelings. And that is why we went to a five set with Fabio Fuganini and

You know, again, if you're new to the sport, you're like, who's that? Fabio Fonini has not won a match since last October. And he took Jannik Sinner to, he took, sorry, he Carlos Alcaraz to five sets. Almost won. Carlos, baby boy, drummer boy. Let's bring it in. But again, I think that will come with age and with time. So that was definitely a close scare.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (15:07)

I heard that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anastasia (15:25)

And I don't know about you and how you feel about these tournaments. There's some players that I feel like you could tell the crowd was afraid. They were like, my God, what if this upset happens in round one? What are we gonna do for two weeks? And I think Carlos Alcaraz is that sort of player who brings the vibes. So there was a big chance of the vibes going out early and thankfully he was able to get through.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (15:34)

yeah.

Anastasia (15:49)

But let's talk about, know, that was just one, that was like an eighth of the things that happened on day one. Medvedev Tsitsipas. What?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (15:52)

You

Yeah, yeah, I mean,

you can put them together in one category because I saw a post that was about their Grand Slam results this year. And Tsitsipas, I believe, has been knocked out of the first round of now three tournaments. And know he left Wimbledon because of an injury, retirement, but out in round one, and I think Medvedev is round one, round two, round two.

Anastasia (16:01)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (16:18)

And it is just weird. is weird. I don't know how else to describe it. It's weird watching Grand Slams without the two of them in it. Say what you want about both of them, you know, if everybody has their opinion about one or the other, whatever. It's just weird not having them there at least through a few rounds. So, yeah, I mean, so weird. It's the right move to put them together because it's puzzling.

Anastasia (16:34)

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we'll get into around to stuff a little bit, but I kind of want to bring Zverev into this now because in May, I think Zverev lost in Rome and I have been thinking for over a year now that these three players, I've sort of equated them to the Lost Boys. It's not the movie Lost Boys, but that's just the phrasing that I...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (16:58)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (17:03)

and I've been calling them the Lost Boys. And we have this thing called Match Stories on, on Groundpass where I just like talk about interesting matches and like what they mean in general for the sport. I, this concept of these boys that are lost that they weren't coming up kind of like towards the end of the big three, next gen, the tournament was starting. This was it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (17:22)

Well.

They came

up towards the end of what we thought was going to be the end of the big three, and then they went on for five, six more years.

Anastasia (17:28)

What we thought was exactly what we thought was going to be the exactly,

but it was going to, it was Medvedev, Tsitsipas, Zverev. They were going to be multiple grand slam winners. That was the consensus. It wasn't, it was not controversial to say that was it. And to come five, six, seven years later and only Medvedev won, won.

And now there are these two other boys who are here. One has won two, Sinner has two now. Right? Am I right? Or three? No, two. No, he has three. Sinner has three Grand Slams, Alcaraz has five, Medvedev has one, and then the other two none. And it looks like they're regressing. Is this it? That's it? That's the lost boys, they're lost and that's it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (18:00)

Three. Three, yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

I mean,

you could, there's probably a few other names that you can kind of toss in there too that kind of were making a name for themselves around the same time. I Shapo, Felix, players that were thought to be kind of the next gen. That was when we first started to hear the term the next gen before the next next gen showed up and kind of ruined all their hopes and dreams. Yeah, I think in Tsitsipas's case, it's definitely regression. I mean, he's...

openly saying if he doesn't start to see results that he would retire. I feel like you're hearing that from a lot of players lately. I don't know what that that's about, but I think when it sits across his case, he's definitely regressed. think Zverev has maintained an extremely high level. He's just I said this today on my Instagram. He just plays not to lose. He doesn't have that dog like killer mentality that the best players seem to have. And it's not to say that he doesn't have the motivation or he's not hungry for it.

Anastasia (18:59)

Mm.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (19:07)

he becomes a pusher in some of these matches. And I was talking to a few people during that match today. And it's, yeah, he's, I wouldn't say he's very of his regressed, but he just hasn't found that next level in his game in order to get, you know, to get to the promised land here. And I think the best chance he had was probably against Nadal when he, you know, rolled his ankle in the French open and had to leave the court there. And yeah, I mean, might have been a...

Mepinev's had better success than the two of them, but he doesn't his game isn't as sustainable. I mean, you just look at his funky form and all of that. you know, it's like he's he hated clay and then he had his best clay court season. And, you know, he's not a grass court player. He's a hard court player. You know, he's a hard court player. I don't think he's ever winning French Open or ever winning Wimbledon.

Anastasia (19:42)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (19:54)

But he's had his ups and downs over his career. He hasn't maintained the same level of consistency as Vera. The three of them both have been pretty consistent and at least being quarter finalists, you know, in the past or semi finalists. But they're not those people now because you have a new generation of players. And I just think a better field of players. You have players in the first round that have upset.

Anastasia (20:17)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (20:19)

top 10 players before. It's not uncommon to see players and seeing the statistics, you know, pop up on the ticker that this is their second top 10 win or something. And then maybe you never hear from that player again. That happens. In fact, Medvedev said to Bonzi about Bonzi, you know, if you have, don't you always play like this? You'd be rich, you know, like you hear these players names, they pop up, they they get these one, this one, you know, win this career making win. And then you don't hear from them again.

So I do think it's just the field of players is just really strong now. And these three players just don't have that extra gear. They just don't.

Anastasia (20:51)

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, I've always said about tennis, you know, I'm always fascinated by people who bet on tennis because it is the most complex sport. I truly believe, especially now, anyone can beat anybody. A lot of times there are some real, the field is very deep. There are a lot of great players out there. Everyone has to be on point to win.

in this sport. And then there are all these, the surfaces are so different. know, like we said in beginning, grass is not forgiving. It's not an easy surface to just like pick up and go. So add that to everything else. I guess we shouldn't be so surprised that this is happening at Wimbledon. It's just a lot. And another name that fell on day one, you know, former member of the baby, of the baby big three, Rune

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (21:40)

No, yeah. Yeah, that was another one that was on really early for me. That one doesn't really come as a surprise because he's not a great grass court player. But yeah, I mean, to lose in the fashion that he did there, I believe he was up two sets to low, right? Yeah, yeah. And Nico Jarry is a very good player.

Anastasia (21:40)

Runers out.

Yes, he was. Yeah, yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (22:01)

was just last year or within the last couple years, a seeded player at these Grand Slams making him to the top 30 in the world. He just had a bad stroke of luck with some injuries and some poor performances, but he's a big server. The grass favors that. I don't take him as the type of player that I thought would come back from two sets down, but yeah, Rune's... I mean...

You'd probably throw them in the same category there. Flash in the pan, Masters 1000 winner, know, former or current top, I can't even remember where he's ranked right now, but he's been in the top 10 pretty consistently. Just doesn't have that extra gear.

Anastasia (22:38)

Yeah, I think he was the eighth seed. So yeah. So those were like, I think the biggest upsets of day one, I think along with Carlos Alcaraz, some players that battled through were Madison Keys. That was a, I don't know if you watched that match, but that was a such a topsy turvy match. She was playing Ruse.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (22:41)

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Mm.

Anastasia (23:01)

who is someone she has, I think actually they played at the Australian Open and actually went to three sets as well and was very similar. think, you know, players, have these sort of like, you know, kind of difficult matchups that they have. And maybe that is something for Madison. But then Ruse as well was going through it. was, it seemed like she was sick. She had a medical timeout and then she had this almost.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (23:01)

Mmm.

Anastasia (23:26)

At least lower body cramps, like her legs were shaking involuntarily a few times. Like it was a lot, but it still got pushed and Madison had to battle through that. And then same with Jasmine Paolini, another person who had to battle through day one. We could have lost more seeds

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (23:33)

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, that

was, well, the other ones that I'd like to shout out too, I didn't get to watch the Keys match, but obviously you look at the score line there and it looked like it was a close match. I didn't see much about that one though. Boulter Badosa I was able to watch. That was a good one. Sad for Badosa because she has found herself really highly seeded Again, she has found her game after just riddled with injuries and it really, really.

sucks to see her so down sometimes and hear some of the quotes about how she feels about her back issues and everything that she's been going through. But Bolter's good. That was a great match on paper before it even started. That was one that I kind of had circled. Bolter playing in front of a home crowd and just two really, really great players. That was a tough match. That was another upset. And then the other one was the other one from day one that I had was Vondrusova and Kessler.

McCartney Kessler is great. I really thought, yeah, and I thought that she could do some damage in this tournament. She's like due for a tournament where she kind of, she's been kind of flying into the radar with American tennis, but she's been really consistent. But again, tough draw getting Vondrusova who yes, she's like kind of dropped in form, but she was the Wimbledon champion two years ago. This is a surface that she found the peak of her game at and Vondrusova pulls through in that one.

Anastasia (24:36)

like with McCartney Kessler

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (25:00)

One thing to point out about that too, like I posted this on Instagram, I actually looked at the last two weeks of grass court events and there are 16 total finalists, that's including the champions. And the reason that Vondrusova-Kessler was interesting was because both of them had won

Anastasia (25:12)

Mm-hmm.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (25:19)

just last two weeks ago, they had just won a title on grass. Kessler won in Nottingham and Vondrusova won in Berlin. So to meet each other after the success that they had in grass, you knew that was going to be a good match. And fun fact about this, I was talking to a few people, of the 16 finalists of the last seven grass court events that have happened over the last two weeks, we watched seven of them get eliminated in round one. So for all of the talk of

Who's carrying momentum? Who had a good grass court season? know, Taylor Fritz, he was the champion in Eastbourne, like all these, you you look at those trends and you look at, oh, Bublik's doing well. And again, these are names that we'll talk about for today and people that we saw playing today. 16 finalists in the last two weeks on grass. Seven of them didn't make it through one round of Wimbledon. That is, I don't know where that ranks historically, but that to me is.

extremely uncharacteristic. And I don't know if that's a sign of the heat from the last two days, fatigue because these are players that have made it deep. But I don't know, it's a little myth busting to me of like carrying momentum or have, you know, grass, great grass season. Seven got knocked out.

Anastasia (26:20)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, that is a really great point. And it's definitely something to talk about. And before we actually go into sort of the curfew of it all, because I totally want to talk about that, but I actually had questions about the heat, because I think midway through day one, it was getting weird. Like it was getting weird. I was like, what is going on? And

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (26:44)

Yeah.

Anastasia (26:49)

I haven't been in London recently, so I was kind of just trying to get a sense of, I mean, is this New York at the US Open in August hot, or is this just some sort of European hot? Because those are two different things, and I couldn't really get a handle on it. I talked to a friend who is a New Yorker, but lived in London actually for the past two years, and I was like, how hot is it? Like, is this?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (27:02)

You

Anastasia (27:13)

Is this why we're getting all of these upsets? Like, is it truly heat related? And she definitely said it was hot. It's not New York in August hot, but for Europe and for London, it was definitely hot and humid. And the only other thing I could think of was, well, you know what? These players have been playing, you know, they were in Bad Homburg in Berlin and they're in London and, you know, playing Queens and all of these things. they've

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (27:22)

Mmm.

Hmm.

Anastasia (27:40)

been there for a while and maybe their body is just acclimated to that sort of European temperate summer where it's not too hot and then this sudden heat wave got a lot of them. Maybe?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (27:52)

I mean, maybe. I don't know if you ever played on grass, but, I can't really say that I'm like, I've played on grass for like 15 minutes. So like take this with a grain of salt, but you always see the, like the temperature check of the surfaces of tennis courts and on grass court, does lower, it is a lower temperature than playing on a hard court or on a clay court. So I thought that it'd make it a little bit more manageable to have the hot heat, but having it on grass. I don't know. I've also heard some people say that like Europeans and,

people in the United Kingdom just like can't tolerate heat because they're just not used to it. I don't know. Maybe somebody who's listening can let us know. Are people from the UK just like they can't deal with the heat like we can? I mean, I'm in California and I'm used to like 90 degrees every single day. So ⁓ I don't know. Yeah, it was, well, they set records for day one. So that's worth mentioning. Day one, hottest records at Wimbledon ever for the first day of the tournament. ⁓

Anastasia (28:26)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (28:48)

So that's not nothing, of course, that's gonna affect how the day goes.

Anastasia (28:52)

Right, I just saw a lot of ice packs. I was like, I guess it's real hot then. ⁓

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (28:56)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (28:57)

But you mentioned Fritz and we should get into that now. But something that happened at the end of the day of day one that definitely affected day two and basically went into day two was.

because of Carlos, we can all blame Carlos Alcaraz for this by the way. Like it all stems from him. But he plays a four and a half hour match, the very first match on center that obviously just decimates the schedule. So Fritz and Giovanni Mpetshi-perricard had to move their match. They start playing and all that stuff. And you know, I think this was always going to be a tough match for Taylor Fritz. Giovanni Mpetshi-perricard set the record of the fastest serve.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (29:16)

Yeah, totally. 100%. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (29:40)

ever to be hit at Wimbledon during this match. He's a massive server, he's a big guy. It's a lot to deal with and he goes two sets to love up and we're thinking, ooh no, another seed's about to go. Taylor then fights back, wins the next two sets and I'm at this point because my flow throughout.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (29:51)

Yeah.

Anastasia (30:04)

You know, yesterday was like, was chill and I was like, it's the start of a grand slam. And then I slowly just tipped down. I was like, what is happening? This is too chaotic for me. You know, I can't deal with this on day one. And Taylor brought the life back. I was like, this is exciting. It was great match. And then it ends. Why does it end Ian? Why does it end?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (30:24)

yeah, this is, I mean, it's great that we like ended on this because it is the perfect segue to day two because it ended up spanning over two days in order for them to finish it. First of all, if I'm in Mpetshi-Perricard I'm getting 153 tattooed on my shoulder or something or whatever the kilometer is, like I'm getting that tattooed because that's, he lost the point though. shout out for it.

Anastasia (30:43)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (30:44)

Yeah, this was always one that was going to be tough. when he went down, when Fritz went down two sets to love and never a break point opportunity, you thought, well, that's it. Like, what are you going to do? They're playing on grass, which is already favors the big serve. And Fritz is fantastic on grass. I saw a stat from Ben Rothenberg through, I think it was through two sets that he had 33 winners and five unforced errors, but was down two sets to love.

Anastasia (30:55)

That's it. Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (31:11)

I mean, that's playing nearly perfect tennis and it not mattering because if you don't get the breakpoint opportunities, you can't win a tennis match. And a lot of the times when you play these big servers, it comes down to the tie break because then you don't need a full game. And this is great for anybody listening who isn't, you know, isn't an avid tennis player and just really getting into like watching it professionally is like.

You need four points minimum in order to break somebody's serve. When somebody's bombing 153 miles per hour at you, you could barely get the ball back. And if you do get it back, you're usually giving them a soft ball that they can put away. How are you gonna break them? When you're exchanging service games and you win your service game and they win theirs, you're just sprinting, or in this case, crawling towards a six-six tie break. And when you get to a tie break, you just need one. You just need one mini break. You need to win.

one point off of their serve. So through the first two sets and the tie breaks went long too, I think it was like eight, eight, eight, six, 10, eight, I believe. I'm trying to think off the top of my head. When it goes to the third set, I'm thinking this is over, right? Fritz can't even get a break point opportunity, but this is the one of the best versions of Fritz I think I've ever seen. And he is not the most exciting watch. I mean, you know, sorry, Taylor, like love you to death. So-Cal guy.

But when he is fired up like this and he is coming back and he's looking at his box and he is slamming his chest and yelling, I'm like, yes, like this is the energy that I like to see in a tennis match. So to see him storm back, the way, I'm sorry to rant, this was the one match that I think I was the most enthralled by. He goes, he goes up in the second set, The second set tie break. ⁓

Anastasia (32:50)

So, mm-hmm. Second set tie break,

yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (32:55)

Yeah, you can finish my thought there if you wanted.

Anastasia (32:57)

Well, he goes up in the second set tie break and you're thinking, okay, great. He's going to close it out. No, no, no, no. It was six. Yeah. And it ended up being 10, eight to Giovanni Mpetshi-Perricard So both first two sets go to tie breaks. The first one is eight, six. The second one is 10, eight. And you're thinking, like you said, ain't no way. Like that's it. Like, what are you going to do?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (33:03)

Yup. Like 6'2". He was like he had... Yeah, crazy.

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (33:24)

You're not able to break him. But like you said, a fired up Taylor Fritz, AKA Morgan's boyfriend, is so enthralling to watch because usually you're just like, it's Taylor, he's tall, he serves, it's okay. But he got fired up and he was able in the third to finally get that break. And that's how he won the third. And then it was...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (33:30)

You

Yeah.

Anastasia (33:46)

You know, again, he had the momentum. So now he's going into the third set and the fourth set, the fourth set gets her tie break. It's, you know, ends in a eight, six, he wins it. And you're thinking, okay, great. But yes.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (33:56)

But, but before we get to that, we

had the reverse happen of set two, where Mpetshi-Perricard is up five one, and you're like, this again, this is over, and Fritz Storm is back to win that tie break. So yeah, that brings us to the start of what was supposed to be the start of set five, which is there's 45 minutes left until the curfew in Wimbledon, which for everybody listening is 11 p.m. local time. And the chair on pipe,

Anastasia (34:03)

Yes, that is true.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (34:24)

Fritz is pumping, slamming his chest, yelling, expletives, and he's so stoked to have forced it to a fifth set. And the chair umpire, you see him crawling down the ladder and you're like, God, no. And the commentators are saying, okay, well, they're gonna have a discussion here with the two players on whether to play the fifth set because at that point, each set was going pretty long.

I think they were still getting them done in close to 40 to 45 minutes. So there's 45 minutes left and they have a decision to make. They have to decide if they think that they can finish this set before the curfew or risk starting it and being a game or two away or even a point, I don't know. They call it right at 11. So if they got to six all, six, five, five, all.

Anastasia (34:51)

Mm-hmm.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (35:09)

Then you have to call it at 11 o'clock and come back tomorrow and play one game or one point or whatever, which is not great. And they asked the two players and Fritz is clearly he wants to keep going. Yeah, he's fired up. He's got the momentum. And for all we know, that set could have just gone lopsided for Fritz because of the way he was playing. know, and if you're in Mpetshi-Perricard you're like, no, let's come back tomorrow because I want to kill this vibe.

And they ultimately made the call to postpone the match the next day. And you hear the mic pick up Taylor Fritz. He goes, then why the hell are you even asking me? Clearly, they had made up their mind that they were going to call the match with 45 minutes. There's a lot of time to play a set. Fans booing, not happy. They paid a ticket to be there. Yeah, it's a bummer.

Anastasia (35:47)

Yeah, yeah.

It was a bummer. for me, I completely, if we're just to take the Wimbledon curfew in isolation, I understand. I get it. It is in a residential neighborhood. It's 11 p.m. You know, as much as I love the New York open vibe, New York open, the U.S. open vibes where it's kind of like, know, remember that year Carlos won? He was like ending matches at 2 30 in the morning every day.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (36:16)

Yeah.

Anastasia (36:17)

But do you want to be playing tennis at like 3 a.m.? Not really. It's not sustainable. So I get it. But my main thing about this was I felt there was enough time. So the longest, the longest set that they had played was 50 minutes. So you're thinking, let's just say this is another longest set. So you're going to go five minutes past the curfew? I just think...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (36:33)

Mm.

Anastasia (36:42)

And yes, who's to say that could have happened? Maybe their next, you know, because we have had sets in tennis be over an hour, like well over an hour. What if it went well over an hour? It's really tough judgment call, but I always think back to 2023 when Andy Murray was playing Stefano Tsitsipas and it was getting close. Andy won the first set.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (37:02)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (37:06)

Stefanos ones the second set and then Andy wins the third. He has the momentum. You can feel it. You could feel the energy. Like you just knew he just needed one more set and he was going to take it and they stop it because of the curfew. What happens? Comes back the next day, loses the next two sets. He's out of the tournament. That was one of Andy's last years. What if he could have made a deep run if he had just stayed in the moment of that tennis match versus chopping it up?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (37:26)

Mm.

Anastasia (37:34)

And we can now flow into this to day two, if we want to look at Zverev's match, for example, because the way Zverev's match, he was playing against Arthur Rinderknech they did two sets yesterday and then three sets today. And I was listening to a commentator say, for Rinderknech, this was a whole just different match. It was the best of three that he was playing today. Forget yesterday. So it's almost a reset.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (37:53)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anastasia (37:59)

I don't know how I feel about something like a curfew affecting the results of matches. It's a tough one. It's a very tough one. And I totally get it because I do understand we don't want tennis to be played at 2 a.m. And I do know as well Wimbledon has this issue with the residents and not playing late or whatever. But at the same time, I'm thinking, wait a second, match play starts at 11 a.m.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (38:19)

Yeah.

Anastasia (38:25)

everywhere else, but on court one, it starts at 1 p.m. and then on court two, it starts at 1 30 p.m. Why not start it earlier at noon maybe? You know, so I don't know. I don't know what you think about that, but I definitely, let's just say if Fritz had come back today and lost the match, we might be having a different conversation.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (38:31)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with everything you had to say. mean, there's this is just another example of tennis and the scheduling just kind of shooting itself in the foot. Like it doesn't seem like it should be that hard to figure out. Start matches earlier, have a rule in place that allows you to go past 11 up to a certain point, right? Maybe like they're in the fifth set, right? And you know that we're not going to have a two hour long set. That would be insane. So, yeah, there's it sucks, but.

Anastasia (39:06)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (39:13)

happy for Fritz yeah happy for Fritz and happy for Rinderknech yeah like

Anastasia (39:16)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It ended, it ended well in both cases. So it's all good. really quick going through to today, you know, I think there are definitely some players like Iga, Shelton, Sinner, they had easy runs today. Like, you know, it was, was the normal first round, you know, story. but then we lost Musetti who

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (39:39)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (39:40)

I think is maybe not as controversial a first round loss because he has been out of it. He was injured. He didn't play Queens to defend all his points. So maybe not too surprising, but then we lost Bublik

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (39:53)

It's so funny that, so Bublik has always just kind of been this, know, anomaly in tennis, this clown who is so much talent, but just kind of, I mean, people sometimes compare him to Kyrios and all that. I mean, he, to me, he's such a goofball and I've never really taken him seriously. And it was really nice to see him play such a good grass court season and talk about, know, have some, was very candid about talking about how

he's thought about retiring because of his inability to win some of the, have more success and win some titles. And then he had great grass court run. I had people messaging me saying like, why aren't we talking about Wublik as a potential Wimbledon winner or like, at least upsetting somebody that we think would win, but he ends up going out in the first round. So there goes that. Yeah. Musetti he's been, think maybe, I think he's been probably top 10, maybe even top five.

Anastasia (40:38)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (40:45)

player over the last few months. So to me that one's really surprising. I think it was semi-finals last year here. A lot of points. Losing a lot of points. Yeah.

Anastasia (40:51)

Yeah, Lot of points.

And he already lost because he was a finalist in Queens and he already lost those points because he didn't, you know, play. I haven't looked at what the live rankings are right now, but I'm guessing it might not be top 10 Musetti anymore, which is a shame, which is a shame because he's a great, great player. hopefully, you know, he'll, you know, sort of recover. I think he is pretty much recovered and he just didn't have any matches on grass maybe. So that's, that's a...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (41:00)

Yeah.

Yeah, that sucks.

Yeah.

Anastasia (41:20)

you know, factor and he will probably come to the States, you know, it's, it's, it's a hardcore swing next. So hopefully he'll come over here and do well. kind of flowing now into what it is that Ian, Ian, we love to talk about starting with the last upset I want to talk about, but we lost Jessica Pegula.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (41:43)

Meh.

Anastasia (41:43)

you know, today, the number,

I know, the number three seed on the women's side. And, oh my goodness, I just also saw, we lost Coco Gauff today as well. Oh boy.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (41:52)

And Coco, I was like, you can put those two

together as like, these are not only the top of the American game, but two favorites to win? Yeah, it sucks. It's so bad. Yeah. That's what I mean. This, this, there's just, I think I have to go through the bracket again and be like, okay, so who am I cheering for now? Because so many players that you expected to see.

Anastasia (42:00)

Ugh, I forgot.

I can't believe I forgot. What a day.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (42:20)

quarterfinals, semi-finals, potential winners are out right now. Both of those hurt so, so, so bad. Just love, I love both of them.

Anastasia (42:26)

Yeah.

Yeah. And Pagu is so great and she won a title coming into this. But I cannot explain to you because she was the first match that I had on today. It was the first match I had on. And I cannot explain how fast that happened and how well Elizabetha Cocciaretto, who who beat her, played. Like Cocciaretto played like...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (42:33)

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (42:50)

Top 10, like she was so focused, it was moving so fast that I almost think Pegula didn't have time to think like what's happening. There was no time because it was over in an hour less. let me even look, because I have it up here and I think that match, let me see.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (42:59)

Hmm.

Yeah, you'll have to tell me because I missed this one. It happened so fast. I just saw that she was out or I heard it on the broadcast and I went, wait, I'm sorry. What did I just hear what I thought? And I had to look it up.

Anastasia (43:13)

You

What?

58 minutes.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (43:22)

Ouch! No, Jess!

Anastasia (43:24)

Like that

is how fast that happened. Like it was so in and out. And I can't even say, well, know, Jess was playing really bad and you know, no, I think she was playing her game and she was playing as well as possible, but Cocciaretto took it to another level and really came out laser focused and it was over before you even knew it. And then, so I start the day that way and how do I end it with Coco Goth losing? Like I...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (43:41)

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, you're bookending your day with heartbreaks and you wonder why none of us are mentally well watching tennis. That's so bad.

Anastasia (43:58)

But and you know,

it's it's so bad. And, you know, full disclosure, Nick and I called that one. We called the the Coco Gauff Dyana Yastremska match upset alert immediately. We started this thing on our on our TikTok and we do it on Instagram as well, but we call it tennis lessons. So we do like little things where, you know, what explains scoring or we'll do.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (44:05)

Mmm.

Anastasia (44:22)

funny enough, just before Wimbledon, we had a tennis lesson on seating. Funny how that works. Seeding doesn't matter. But we had one on, the very first tennis lesson we did was on scoring, explaining how scoring works and how tie breaks and all of that stuff worked. And the match that we used to break down that lesson was Coco Gauff versus Dyana Yastremska at the Madrid Open, which went.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (44:26)

Yeah, yeah, well, it doesn't matter now.

Hmm.

Anastasia (44:47)

Three sets, really tough, and Coco Gauff barely made it through. So coming into this, were like, that's a tough matchup for her. But we thought it would be on upset alert, but kind of thought Coco would figure it out.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (44:55)

Well.

Yeah, it was more like, audience, tune in, this might be a better match than you think, you know, and straight sets, yeah.

Anastasia (45:08)

Yeah.

straight sets like again, another player who, yes, Stremska was so focused, laser, laser focused and her team, you I think she was, she, tried to serve out that first set. I think it was at five three. She was serving for it. And then of course nerves took over. So then it went to a tie break, but then she won the tie break and then just cruised. was six one in the second, but her team were like hyping her up and you know, you can do it. You can take her. Like it was.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (45:37)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (45:38)

It was a lot, but you can tell like probably they had experienced what happened in Madrid because in Madrid, for example, the first set was six love. It was a bagel. She bageled Coco Gauff in the first set. So I think they definitely thought they had a chance and they were not going to let it go this time. So it was a shame, but hats off to Dyana Yastremska She's a big, powerful hitter and plays well and

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (45:48)

Mm.

Anastasia (46:02)

a player from Ukraine and I always root for them because they're going through it just personally as well. yeah, tough loss with the tournament and yeah, but good for Dyana Yastremska

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (46:05)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, when we get off the podcast later today, I'm going to have to go, I really, I'm not joking. I'm going have to go back through the draw and be like, okay, who am I rooting for now? Like, you know, I always have kind of in my head, these are my players. These are the ones I'm always supporting. So many got knocked out. I think I'm going to be going through and not just looking at round two and the matches that I'm excited to watch, but who's left? Like who do I want to cheer for? Who do I think's got the best chance? know, who's quarter of the bracket.

opened up so much that you can see, I don't know, I'll just throw a name out there, see a Tommy Paul making a semi-final or something like who, I can't wait to look through it again because I haven't had the time to do it, but so many players got knocked out. It's gonna be wide open on both sides.

Anastasia (46:52)

Yeah, okay. I think we should take a break from the seriousness of the tennis, Ian, and get into what it is that we love. And that's very cool looking kits, cool fashion, lifestyle, branding. Let's talk about all of the good things. Initially, really thought, because I wanted to have, you weren't available during the French.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (47:05)

Yeah.

Anastasia (47:16)

didn't really work out. So, you know, I had someone else on doing that, Kaya. Hi. It was really, really fun. But I thought at first I was like Wimbledon, like what are Ian and I going to talk about? White kits, they all look the same. They all look the same. You know, what could possibly happen? But this Wimbledon, the brands, I think they listened, Ian. I think they listened.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (47:37)

Yeah,

yeah, think they are. think their tennis fashion is very, you know, in vogue right now. People are talking about it and I do think the brands are. It takes a while to build a good release. These things probably start...

you know, at least, you know, months, if not a full year in advance sometimes, between sourcing what products they want to get and designing it and all of that kind of stuff. So you have to take all this with a little bit of a grain of salt in that, like, we've been kind of harping on these brands for like, can we get some good fashion and tennis again, and slowly, you know, brand by brand, if each one has kind of brought something to the table over the last couple of years. And some of these

Process has probably started going back to last year and yeah, we had some real standouts.

Anastasia (48:20)

Yeah, okay, so let's start, I think, in my personal opinion, with the winners.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (48:27)

Mm hmm. Yeah, let's go.

Anastasia (48:28)

adidas, adidas, however you say it, they won. And I'm calling it now. Like there's no debate. Maybe debate me if you want, but when I first started seeing the teasers of their little campaign and stuff, I kept being like, wait, is this the Wimbledon kit? Is this lifestyle? What is this? And it turns out it's the Wimbledon kit. So if you've been watching Wimbledon, or if you haven't, by the way,

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (48:30)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anastasia (48:57)

Obviously, this is an audio podcast. You can get it wherever you listen to podcasts, but we're also on YouTube. So if you're on YouTube or wanting to see the visuals of what we're looking at, stop here, go to YouTube and watch it. If you're on Spotify, you're already getting the images. So.

Adidas came to play. They saw Wilson and they're like, no, no, We are heritage. We are the originals. We made Stan Smith. Like, come on. What was your first thought on these Adidas looks?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (49:18)

You

Yeah, we got a lot of the releases started to come out like around this exact same time. So my feed's getting flooded with all the different brands within a day or two of one another. They just started kind of releasing everything. And like you, I thought this was just gonna be released alongside that this was gonna be a lifestyle collection that you could purchase. Always the best stuff never makes it onto the court. They did a collab maybe five or six years ago with...

I say it's escaping me now, but they have had good releases before when they've decided to put in the effort. Adidas has been one that for me remained at the bottom of the barrel every single year when you're seeing people stepping it up and the Wilson's coming and, know, and different brands really starting to focus on it. Adidas was still putting out the worst stuff, in my opinion.

Anastasia (50:19)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (50:19)

The worst because

Anastasia (50:19)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (50:20)

you had to see it on so many damn players and it wasn't good. Yeah. And this is a knockout. They're using the original Adidas Originals logo. They're using the classic white and Kelly green, which was what they rolled out with the original Stan Smith shoes. ⁓ The details are phenomenal. Your graphic here is great. You know why it doesn't include Zverev. ⁓ Everybody else on the Adidas team here looks...

Anastasia (50:23)

over and over again.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (50:46)

It crushes. It's so good. is. Yeah. I mean, look at Sonay Kartel is like that is. Yeah, it's a leak. It's it's got to be the best.

Anastasia (50:48)

brushes.

I can't.

And so the very first look I saw, obviously, because it was the first match I watched, was Elina Svitolina in the dress. I thought, already, thought just looking at that dress, I was like, oh my god, know, Adidas is going to win. I don't care what the Wilson dress is. Like that dress on Svitolina looked awesome. And then I turned on Sonay Kartel and I thought, no, oh my god, she's wearing, like the shirt, again, look up these images because they're just so great. But the shirt,

is almost see-through-y, but it's like woven, it's, you know, it's so hard to explain the details. It has a collar and then the shorts, because she's wearing the shorts version. And I was just taken aback. I was like, wow, this is a look. I thought, this is my favorite. And then I saw the romper. I saw the romper on, on Ruse, who was playing with Madison Keys. And we have it in here. And I was like,

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (51:46)

Yeah.

Anastasia (51:47)

No, I love the romper. There's too much to love. There's just so much. I just kept thinking, how can I purchase every piece? Like, here's my credit card. Just mail it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (51:49)

Yeah.

Sure.

Well, even better if anybody from Adidas

hears this and they want to send us something, please. ⁓ Because I want it all. I'm with you. I want it all. And I think what's important is, you know, we talk about when brands really knock it out of the park or when brands, you know, release their collection for a season. And a lot of the times they'll have one look and not every player can pull that off. You see, you know, really skinny players wearing things that look oversized on them. Or you'll see some players where

Anastasia (52:05)

Please, please do.

Right.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (52:27)

you know, a skirt maybe looks better than shorts or shorts better than a skirt. They offered something for everybody on the Adidas team. And that is so important because that allows the players to pick out what they feel confident and what they look best in. And I think they all knocked out of the park. think they each player here always wearing something completely different, but it all looks cohesive. It is all very obviously part of the same collection. And you put them all together in a photo shoot together and it works. So, you know,

Anastasia (52:50)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (52:56)

Nike, I thought, had a really, really good Roland Garros, and I didn't get to talk on the pod with you ⁓ for Roland Garros, but you had everybody wearing these really great outfits and then you had like the teal and you're like, what is that doing in the mix? Right. Everybody else crushed it. And then you'd have like one player wearing something that didn't look like it was part of the same collection. This is cohesive. Everybody and what they're wearing, they all have different outfits that are unique to them, but it looks fantastic together. So.

Anastasia (53:09)

What is that thing?

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (53:24)

Yeah, it's a win for me.

Anastasia (53:24)

Yeah.

Yeah. And the thing about this too is funny that we thought this was going to be the lifestyle part of it. There's a whole lifestyle part of it. ⁓ I saw some footage from their, ⁓ I guess, you know, I think all these brands, have houses, you know, kind of doing brand activations and things like that at the beginning of the tournament. So I saw a lot of footage from that and there are all these like beautiful knit tops and

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (53:41)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (53:51)

You know, think Muchova was wearing this sort of like, I think it was like a Sambas maybe, and then the sort of see-through socks. I don't know what happened, but Adidas, chef's kiss, we love it all. And if you need our addresses, I'm in New York, Ian's in California, we can send it. Just, you know, mail this stuff to us and we will wear it. Again, really, really crushed it with this one.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (54:02)

Hmm.

You

huh.

Anastasia (54:16)

You know, I think we always just have to talk about Wilson because they've been doing good work for so long. And I really hope that that's what's pushing these brands. Like, you know, I think every Grand Slam for the last like eight or so, we all just sit and look at Marta Kostyuk in whatever Wilson dress she's wearing that time. And it's like, my God, it's the best. you know, and that's just been the dialogue for so long. ⁓ Funny enough.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (54:20)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (54:44)

And maybe because this actually looks so similar, especially the bottom half to what the Nike dresses look like as well. It's okay, I like it, but it's just another Wilson dress for me. Like this is not one of the ones where I was just like, my God, have to have it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (54:54)

Yeah.

Yeah, it was hard, it was gonna be hard for them to top what they did with Kostyuk last year. Unfortunately, a lot of the players that are Wilson sponsored right now are, have struggled to get through. I Kostyuk got eliminated today too, that's another upset. ⁓ They have ⁓ Nico Jarry who got through, but he hasn't been a factor for a little bit there on the men's side.

Anastasia (55:18)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (55:25)

But I believe they have Alicia Parks got eliminated and then Victoria Mboko, right? Yeah.

Anastasia (55:31)

Mboko, which

actually that reminds me, it's someone that we didn't talk about during like the tennis talk, but just to like give her some love here, came in, you know, she was in qualifying, didn't really make it, came in as a lucky loser. I heard on tennis channel that she had only 30 minutes before. That's how fast it was. Like she learned 30 minutes before and then she has to like go to site and like play tennis. ⁓ And she won. She beat a seed. She beat another seed.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (55:37)

Yeah.

Wow. Wow.

Yep, yep, yeah. Was it Frech,

was it? Yeah. I like her outfit better than Kostyuk's and usually, and again, it's very simple. it definitely checks all the boxes. It's got a little bit of detail, but for the first time, usually Kostyuk is kind of leading the charge with Wilson, but yeah, I think I'd actually go in reverse here. think I like what Mboko's wearing better than Kostyuk's here.

Anastasia (56:01)

Frech, Frech, yeah.

Yeah, and what Mboko's wearing, I don't have a photo of it here, but it's basically a white version of kind of that yellow kit she had on ⁓ at Roland Garros, where it's like the half zip top collar thing. It is beautiful. Like it's really gorgeous. ⁓ Nike, again, I don't know what they're doing with Nike court. It seems like it's back, but not.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (56:31)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anastasia (56:49)

being called

Nike Court or something, but I do enjoy the logos. I do enjoy seeing the old Nike Court logos. What can I say? It's white, it's Nike. I'm not sort of, it's not offensive, but I'm not blown away like, my goodness, this is like something special. To what I wanna actually talk about with Nike, which unfortunately I wasn't able to find a lot of photos of, were the accessories. So we had...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (56:58)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Anastasia (57:14)

Carlos Alcaraz, Walk on Court. I don't know if you saw this with the cardigan. It was trying to give Roger Federer cardigan at Wimbledon vibes, but not as...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (57:18)

⁓ I did.

Embarrassing to even bring them up. Embarrassing to even

bring them up in the same word. But you're not. Yeah. So I saw I saw a post about this where they're like, I can't remember what the caption was, but it was like, you know, like Alcaraz, Dones, Cardigan, Roger Federer, 2000, whatever. And I was like, don't even don't even do that. They're not the same. His looks like it was on a kid's rack and barely fit in.

It's got like hole punches in it. I don't know if you saw the details on it, but like it's got like holes in it, not even like a pattern, just like weird. And it's way too tight on him. Horrible, doesn't look regal. mean, Federer looked like a, a Norse god, walking out in, you know what I mean? Like a Swiss god, whatever, you know I mean? Like it's, yeah, not even, it was embarrassing. Yeah.

Anastasia (57:52)

I did, I did.

Yeah.

Yeah. And

here's the thing about like all that stuff, which I think we'll get into a little bit here with Nike is that that Roger Federer cardigan, that was Roger Federer's cardigan. The one, the cardigan that that Carlos Alcaraz wore, I saw, and I know this might just be this is feeding into the sort of controversy or not controversy, but like, you know, the sort of rumor mill. But Emma Raducanu was wearing the same cardigan.

Like it's not a special for Alcaraz cardigan. It's just part of their collection, which that's a thing that still stumps me a little bit with Nike is because they have Alcaraz, they have Sinner, they have Sabalenka. Wear the custom outfits. These are the number one and two stars in the world of tennis.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (58:38)

Yeah. Good.

Yeah.

It's a... Yeah.

Yeah, and it's important to note too that the cardigan that Roger wore was when he was sponsored by Nike. So you know that they're capable of caring. ⁓ They just choose not to. ⁓ So yeah, like I am firing shots here to anybody that works at Nike because whatever's going on there, they're actively choosing to not care and put things down on the totem pole of priorities for Nike. And ⁓ yeah, I mean...

Anastasia (59:07)

Yes.

Right.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (59:27)

They should, yeah, I don't know. They just gotta put an effort in. It's just not, yeah.

Anastasia (59:29)

Yeah, they have to put in effort,

but here's the thing. So we just talked about that. We're telling you, hey, Nike, you know, they don't care. And then they do something like this, which what we have here is a photo of Alex Eala and a hair tie. And it is from Nike. Nike created it in her press conference later on. She said that Nike, it was their idea and they did this for her.

But what they did for Alex Eala is they created this head, like an elastic hairband, but that has the national flower of the Philippines on it. And it was like a personal touch that they gave her to wear during Wimbledon. And along with stuff like this, you you see Sabalenka with the Nike shoes that has a tiger on it. You'll see, you know, Sinner with shoe that has a fox on it. I just feel like these are

For a brand like Nike, again, I really loved this little touch that they did for Alex Eala, who's this sort of like new bright player coming through, you know, first, she's breaking so many records because she's just the first person from the Philippines doing all these things. ⁓ I just don't think it's far enough. Where is Alex Eala's custom Nike white dress covered with these flowers? You can play in that. I think you could play in that.

So I think it's just, it's like, they do a little bit, it's almost like they do the barest minimum instead of like going all the way with it. And in a time where I feel like tennis fashion and interest in tennis fashion and lifestyle is taking such a rise in just society in general.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:00:54)

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Anastasia (1:01:12)

It just seems like they're leaving so much on the table, in my opinion.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:01:16)

Yeah,

⁓ I don't really know what the explanation is there. Obviously, Nike is in a lot of different sports and tennis just doesn't really seem to be a major priority for them. And they've got some of the biggest stars in the game and that seems to be all they care about or I don't know.

Anastasia (1:01:29)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Walkout kits. I don't know what happened. It almost started getting teased a little bit at the French Open in terms of like the walkout kit coming back. you know, Coco Gauff had that leather jacket. Nike had those sort of like wrap skirts that they gave the girls, I think.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:01:43)

yeah.

Anastasia (1:02:01)

Qinwen Zheng was too shy to wear hers, but like Mirra Andreeva wore one on court and you just like, it's a wrap and you take it off and it's this flowy skirt. And I think it started at Roland Garros and then Wimbledon just said, hold my pimms. We're gonna go all in on the walkout kit. And it's such a shame that literally all the players are about to talk about are out of the tournament, all of them. But here is Adidas again.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:02:26)

Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Anastasia (1:02:30)

And I remember I posted this in the morning and it was very, you as things like this go, it was very controversial. It was either you loved it or you hated it. But we have Jessica Pegula coming out in this sort of train skirt. And when I say a train, there is a train. She's, you know, it's a long train of a skirt and then a cape top over it. Like it's a whole walkout fit. So incredible. And then this bag.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:02:45)

Incredible.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

Anastasia (1:02:57)

This custom Adidas bowling bag. It's almost like a bigger version of a bowling bag. And I know she had it. I saw it on a lot of the guys also carrying it. I mean, I love everything about it. love everything. And I'm so sad that this is it. This is the one time we get to see it.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:03:02)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is sad, ⁓ yeah, I mean, it looks incredible. I don't know what's controversial about it. If you don't like this, you are probably a really boring person to talk to about tennis. I don't know. Like, it's just, it's so interesting just to have walkout kits, to have different flares and personalities happening here. I mean, what you're looking at here is you want to marry the heritage and the history of tennis and...

Anastasia (1:03:33)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:03:41)

Nobody wants to bring back the flowy dresses that women wore in the early decades of tennis or whatever. Nobody wants tennis, and it's impractical to think that tennis players are going to play in anything like that now. But you have this modern take on, this is what I'm walking out onto the court on. This is a fashion statement as I walk out onto the court and I've got this bag and everything. And then you take it off and you've got your kit, whatever. ⁓ This is a tip of the hat to that. This is...

Anastasia (1:03:55)

Right.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:04:09)

You know, was, women used to wear big, huge dresses on tennis courts and you're walking out into Wimbledon where there's all this history. It's absolutely amazing. And if you think otherwise, like, I don't know what to say. what are we talking about?

Anastasia (1:04:09)

Yeah.

Same.

I have no idea what to say because I think it's perfect. I love what this is. It's bringing back that sort of like Serena always used to have this, you know, it was like a walkout moment. There was something she was wearing and it there is an entertainment factor to sports. You know what I mean? It's entertainment. It's lifestyle. Yes, they're still playing a sport. It's stressful. It's active.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:04:42)

Mm-hmm.

Anastasia (1:04:50)

You know, they need to be able to move and stuff. And like you said, nobody's asking Jessica Pegula to play in this, but watching her come out with this, it was so disappointing that then she lost because you're like, no, you're wearing the winning outfit. You have to win. And then we had Lorenzo Musetti

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:05:00)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I just saw something about this today. Wait, who's who is this jacket by again?

Anastasia (1:05:13)

So this jacket, here we have a photo of Lorenzo Musetti wearing a Bottega Veneta, intrecciato weave, full leather jacket. I mean, I think it's leather. I think it's leather because Bottega Veneta, that's their thing. This sort of woven leather design is their trademark. And he did a campaign for Bottega Veneta during ⁓ Rome, which...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:05:19)

Yeah.

Anastasia (1:05:38)

I had just assumed that that meant he was now a brand ambassador, but I guess it actually wasn't until Wimbledon that they officially announced Lorenzo Musetti as the new Bottega Manetta ambassador. And he walks out in this. I mean.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:05:55)

⁓ I'm like I'm zooming

in on the details right now. And yeah, wow, it is so good.

Anastasia (1:06:02)

So good. So, I mean, this jacket deserved one more match. It deserved so much. But yeah, like again, I love moments like this. you know, I think sometimes I think, you know, and in general, my personal opinion online is not real life. So it's not like I'm taking all of this stuff seriously. But I remember someone commenting on one of, you know, I saw a photo and I was looking through the comments and everyone was like,

my goodness, it was so hot. How could he have worn this onto the court? I'm like, excuse me? He's going from inside air conditioning to like two seconds he's on the court, he takes it off. we, can we be for real? But again, I love this. I love that, you know, luxury brands. I think this almost started with, you know, Jannik Sinner signing with Gucci and then, you know,

Carlos Alcaraz is with Louis Vuitton. Now we have Bottega Veneta. Like they're all coming into it. They're all getting in on tennis in a more sort of lifestyle way. Because of course we've, you know, we have the Rolexes. Like, yes, they've been sponsoring tennis forever. But I feel like this is something someone's gonna go into a store and buy this jacket. You know? Yeah, yeah. I mean.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:07:10)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, if they can afford it, sure,

Anastasia (1:07:24)

It's cheaper than a Rolex, I think, I think. I don't know. I actually do not know Bottega's prices. ⁓ And then finally, wanted to end with... Starting, I said Adidas won. And I wanna say Adidas won as a full collection. Like they won as an idea. They won...

And again, I love what you said that they created looks for all of their different players. You had options that still felt like a cohesive look. When it comes to a custom look for a tennis player, New Balance has entered the chat because I don't know what you thought of this look on Coco, but wow, I've been waiting for someone to do this for so long. I have been waiting since

Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams. I've been waiting for someone to do a white look at Wimbledon that was fun, interesting, different. And what New Balance did for Coco Gauff was a serve. I mean, it's perfect. It's so good.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:08:34)

Yes, and great shout out to Sharapova. That look that she had was, just, had to pull it up 2008 where she had the, they're calling it the tuxedo look, which yeah, but it is very regal, wedding, ⁓ very formal looking. ⁓ Cocos is definitely a little bit more, ⁓

Anastasia (1:08:48)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:09:01)

floral, it's got the lace patterns and everything. Yeah, yet again, it's another one that we won't get to see anymore this tournament, but is a complete standout because there isn't anything else like that.

Anastasia (1:09:09)

No.

There isn't anything else like it. And this is the sort of thing where, you know, all the other New Balance looks, they don't look anything like Coco's. It's a stand out, personal, custom look for her. They released, which was funny too, I think it was like during the second set of the match, they released a video, like a reel video promoting the dress. And I was like, my God, this is so bad. It is a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous video.

It's so lovely. We don't get to see the dress anymore, but I hope this is a start because for the most part, I mean, they've been giving her custom looks definitely, but there's something about this one. And she kind of talked about it a little bit during Roland Garros with the leather jacket. Cause she said, you know, New Balance have always been doing these things for me. I just haven't worn them so much. And she's trying to start experimenting a little bit.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:09:43)

Yeah.

Anastasia (1:10:05)

with the fashion she wears on court, with the leather jacket she wore, with this dress she's wearing here, she's wearing the dress, the bow in the hair, the shoes. This is something Naomi Osaka would wear. And it's funny because this year Naomi Osaka for Wimbledon kept it very simple. And I think she's a little bit burnt from a couple of early round losses in those sort of looks. Because it can get...

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:10:16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Anastasia (1:10:33)

She lost first round of Roland Garros in that sort of gorgeous pink, you know, with the sort of cherry blossoms in her hair and all that stuff. So she's very simple for this, for Wimbledon, but this is definitely something Naomi Osaka would do. And I love it on Coco. And I love that they're experimenting in that way.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:10:51)

Yeah, no, I actually went to look up Osaka earlier because you're right, you're used to seeing her kind of coming out with something as ⁓ loud as this, you know, and having such a specific aesthetic to their personality. And we didn't get that from Osaka. I don't know what that's a reflection of whether, ⁓ I don't know. Yeah. So I'm glad we got it from Coco though. This is a good look that sadly we won't get to see any longer.

Anastasia (1:11:17)

Yeah,

yeah.

Okay. I mean, we've been going for a while now because, but Hey, I prepped everyone from the beginning. This was going to be a long one. A lot happened in round one. I don't even think we talked about every single thing, but let's start to wrap it up.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:11:22)

hehe

Anastasia (1:11:34)

And round two starts tomorrow. What are we looking forward to in round two? There are definitely a few round two matches that,

I'm excited for tomorrow. We do a sort of match of the day situation where we put on our socials like what match we will definitely be watching. For me tomorrow, I definitely want to be watching Ethan Quinn and Kamil Majchrzak. I apologize if I didn't say that well. He's from Poland, young player. And Ethan Quinn is just always someone that

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:11:49)

Hmm.

Anastasia (1:12:11)

You know, I think he's young, an American player, been grinding through Challenger tours. It's so nice to see him like that grind payoff. There's nothing I love more than hard work paying off. And he's done that grind through the Challengers, know, term pro a couple of years ago. And here he is finally in the top 100. He's into the second round of Wimbledon with big opportunity. Like his section decimated.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:12:35)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anastasia (1:12:39)

These two players, two young players, one from Poland, one from America, whoever wins this has really a lot of potential to go far in this tournament. And that's why this is definitely a match for me for tomorrow.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:12:51)

So that's your men's match of the day for tomorrow? Okay. That's a good one. That's a good pick. Yeah, looking at the draw, he would have had to face Zverev in round three if he had made it, but Zverev's not here anymore. yeah, that is a good one. Love Ethan Quinn, love his story. If I had to pick a match of the day for tomorrow, there's a few on my radar. You know, I think...

Anastasia (1:12:54)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:13:14)

because of how many upsets you kind of have to talk yourself into a few of these matches and why they could be good. know, Fonseca is playing Brooksby. I don't like Brooksby's game at all. Fonseca is amazing and extremely fun to watch. But again, I'm watching a guy that I love and a guy that I don't like to watch. Norrie Tiafoe could be interesting, but I think this is going to maybe be a little boring.

Anastasia (1:13:18)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:13:39)

I actually think I'm going to go with Alcaraz and Oliver Tarvet. The reason I'm going to pick that one is we saw Alcaraz get a little shaky. We know that there is the potential for upset there still. I think as the tournament goes on, that's going to be less and less likely. Oliver Tarvet is a wild card qualifying player.

Anastasia (1:13:43)

Mmm.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:13:59)

He is the number two ranked college player in the entire US. He plays for University at San Diego. He's from the UK. He is British, right? So he's gonna have the home crowd there. And he's playing in his first ever ATP Tour level event and it's a Grand Slam and he won his first round and he came through qualifying.

That's kind of cool. And I liked his quote. I heard a quote from him. He was asked about, know, obviously this is the biggest moment of his very young career playing the number two player in the world defending champion Alcaraz. He said, I think I'm capable of beating anybody. Hell yeah, dude. Go off, go off. Like, sure. Most people are just going to be like, I'm thankful for the opportunity. Yes, this is once in a lifetime. Like this is great.

Anastasia (1:14:31)

I love players. Yep, yep.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:14:40)

He says, think I'm, he didn't say, think I could beat Alcaraz necessarily, or he didn't say he like bets himself versus that. He's just projecting confidence. He thinks that he is capable of beating anybody. And if you're a young player, you see this with a lot of the players when they're on their first year on tour, they haven't suffered a loss yet. They haven't suffered, you know, gone through a full year of on tour and had to deal with some, you know, difficulties or setbacks or whatever. This is when they're dangerous. Like,

Anastasia (1:14:49)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:15:08)

This is when they can put up a performance when you're like, whoa, who is this guy? Where did he come from? He's like ranked, yeah, I think coming into it ranked outside of the top 700. Now he's in the top 600. I don't think he's, I don't know. Of course I'm not going to sit here and say that. think he's going to win, but we're going to watch a player that could be somebody someday really, you know, like, and be a factor on tour. So that's the one I got.

Anastasia (1:15:08)

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was on our, you know, qualifiers to watch list. So ⁓ really, really great story. Some other matches just in general, in round two, you know, we obviously have Fritz versus Diallo. I'm just on the Fritz train right now. You know, let's go, let's go all the way Fritz. Cause we suffered through round one, I think.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:15:31)

Nice.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anastasia (1:15:45)

We

should make it as far as possible. ⁓

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:15:48)

Don't make us look like idiots. We're

all on the train now, Fritz.

Anastasia (1:15:52)

We're all on the train.

know, Djokovic, Dan Evans. You know, I think Dan Evans is having that sort of, this is maybe my last year on tour, I don't know what's happening kind of vibe he's giving. So that could be fun. Raducanu Vondrusova

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:15:56)

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

Anastasia (1:16:09)

You know,

that's great. Baptiste Mboko Haley Baptiste has been doing so well this European swing, you know, and here she is now. She gets through the first round and she gets this lucky loser who's gotten through the first round and that could be fun. the one that I think might be out of place for people that I'm really, really interested in is Marozsan versus Munar. And I want to say,

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:16:13)

Yep.

okay, explain.

Anastasia (1:16:36)

because, so Munar plays Alcaraz in Queens and is the one player to push him. It was really tight in that match. And Munar is someone who, as a Spanish player, who just hasn't been on the scene. But this year, starting in Dallas, he played some phenomenal tennis in Dallas. And I think he got to the quarters or semis, something like that.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:16:40)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anastasia (1:17:01)

correct me if I'm wrong in the chat and stuff, but he was playing so well and he kind of carried it on. Is he making it deep to every tournament he plays? No, but he does have these brilliant matches and it's almost like he's building and becoming a better and better player. And what does he do today? Take out the sort of dangerous floater in the men's draw in Sasha Bublik.

Like everyone was like, my God, Bublik is, you know, he's dangerous now and things and Munar plays so well and takes him out. And I just think he's underestimated because I remember posting after that match, Carlos won it in Queens, Munar lost. And I remember posting, was like, I know Carlos won guys, but props to Munar because he played excellent. And I got so.

You know, they're like, no, Carlos was just on one of his journeys and he, you know, he wasn't focused and all of this stuff. And I was like, no, that's really underestimating how good Munar is. he's just, he's not the, Jaume Munar is not the likely player that I think people are like, I'm going to be watching that guy, but you should be watching that guy. Cause I think, I think he can, he can do some things. Just putting it out there.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:17:58)

Mm.

Yeah,

Anastasia (1:18:13)

I might be completely wrong.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:18:15)

I we'll see. If he ends up making it through that round, he'll play the winner of Draper-Chilich, which is kind of an interesting match because Chilich, you know, another big server, tough on grass, definitely on the back end of his career. I think Draper handles that one, but he'll play the winner. Munar would have to play the winner of that, which, you know, I definitely think I'm...

kind of behind Draper to make it pretty far in this tournament. I think he is gonna kind of rise up to the pressure of playing in front of the home crowd with the way that he's been playing.

Anastasia (1:18:41)

Yeah, he's had a very sort of lockdown moment and I wish I had planned ahead to find this photo, but I was talking to some British podcasters, shout out to Blackspin Global, Lucy and Eugene, hi. But I have been so fascinated with why Draper is not like one direction in the UK right now. Like he's just not the biggest thing ever, which for me is so

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:19:04)

like the biggest thing ever. ⁓

Anastasia (1:19:09)

Weird. He is, I'm sorry, objectively an attractive person, tall, looks like an athlete, built like an athlete. He should be on, I mean, he is already on the cover of fashion magazines, but I just feel like he should be so much of a bigger star. And I was talking to him, I was like, am I missing something? why, why is he not being followed by paparazzi everywhere? And then I don't know if you saw it, but recently.

there's a photo that came out of Jack Draper at a gas station filling up his car. And if that is, is that not the most 90s, early 2000s paparazzi photo you have ever seen? It just gave me flashbacks of like Britney Spears and know, Paris Hilton pumping gas at some station somewhere. And I thought, maybe it's catching on. Maybe he will be like the biggest star ever.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:19:35)

Yeah. Yeah, I saw it. Yeah.

Yeah.

He's wearing the cutoff sleeve Jordan t-shirt, or not t-shirt, cutoff sleeve, like all white, like Jordan. And he's wearing, you know, chunky 90s Nike shoes and like baggy track pants. Yeah, I think this, I will say it. I think he's maybe the most attractive guy on the tour.

Anastasia (1:20:09)

Yeah.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:20:15)

I'm putting him and Tommy Paul and if you had a hottie bracket the way that the Nothing Major podcast did, I'm putting Tommy Paul and I'm putting Draper in the finals against each other. And I had to pull this up and I'm gonna fire another shot here. Nothing Major podcast voters voted Casper Ruud over Jack Draper. And I said, in what world are you all living in? what? I think he's the best looking tennis player on the men's tour personally.

Anastasia (1:20:17)

Thank you.

universe.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:20:42)

Yeah, I think he's getting bigger and obviously his success lately is attributing to that, but I think he's the most attractive tennis player on the men's tour, so.

Anastasia (1:20:43)

I

Yeah.

Fight us, fight us on it. Fight in the comments. Let us know how we're wrong, but we're right, just saying. Ian, I mean, we've gone an hour and a half here and it's just been the best. Thank you for coming on. I mean, Wimbledon round one. You know, it's one of those things where it's chaotic. It's like, where are all these seeds going? But a lot of times this is the fun. This is the fun in tennis, like sure.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:20:52)

you

Love it.

Anastasia (1:21:13)

Would we have loved all the seeds to go through? Yes, there's some of those outfits that I want to have seen in like another round or two, but at the same time, this gave us something to talk about and it was really fun.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:21:24)

Yeah, no, I've had a blast as always. think, you know, round two, round three, we're gonna have to find like, what's the player that's gonna make a name for themselves, right? You've got a lot of people that might not have expected to be.

even through round one and they're going to have a section of the bracket maybe that's going to open up for them or is opened up and they might have a life-changing opportunity. We had Boisson in the French Open. That was the story of the tournament for a while there. This is somebody who had an opportunity to make quadruple the amount of money that they've made over their entire career in the course of one week and somebody's going to have that story. Some player on the men's and women's side or maybe even multiple are going to advance for a few rounds.

and it's going to become a story and that's going to be fun to talk about. So we definitely have something to look forward to still.

Anastasia (1:22:09)

Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you everyone for listening. Again, if you are listening to this on a podcast player of your choice, leave us a five star rating. Leave a comment. Let us know what you think. Is Jack Draper the most attractive man on the men's tour? Yes, that's the answer. If you're on YouTube, like and subscribe. Leave a comment. Again, yes is the answer to that question. Thank you, Ian.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:22:26)

you

You

Anastasia (1:22:36)

Thank you everyone for listening and we will see you at the end of round two. What could happen? Bye guys.

Ian Mondul Aka Forty-Love (1:22:41)

Let's go.