The Tennis Abstract Podcast

This year, I ranked the top 128 players of the last 100 years. I wrote long-form essays about each one, which I've published over the last eleven months. Carl Bialik joined me for a podcast episode to mark the end of the project. We solicited questions, and many of you came through--we ended up with a list of over 200 questions! Spoiler alert: Even after three hours, we didn't get through them all. I may write something in the next couple of weeks touching on some of the questions we didn't have time for. We talk about the algorithm, players with controversial rankings (or no rankings at all), reactions to the project, and much, much more.

Jeff McFarland is the proprietor of the analytics site HiddenGameOfTennis.com, and like me, he has tried his hand at various mathematical approaches to rank the best players of all time, in both tennis and baseball. We start this jumbo episode by talking about Jim Courier--#107 on my Tennis 128 list--a player with a reputation that outstrips his career record, though both are outstanding. Jeff weighs in on the Courier-Chang comparison, and we talk about how Jimbo's inside-out forehand changed the game. We consider whether the early 1990s were a deceptively weak era, how much weight the slams deserve, which current players are most like Courier, some possible limitations of Elo for GOAT rankings, and--in more than one and half hours of tennis talk--a whole lot more.

Serbian-American writer Ana Mitric joins me to discuss the latest entry in my Tennis 128, Goran Ivanisevic. Ana was a Goran fan even before she took a broader interest in tennis, and she is particularly sensitive to how the breakup of the former Yugoslavia affected players on all sides of the conflict. We talk about the state of Yugoslav tennis before the wars, Goran's status in his native Croatia, and how his attitude to the conflict differed from older players. We also discuss how Ivanisevic attracted so many fans despite a one-dimensional game that was often boring in less-mercurial hands, why his outspokenness didn't seem to turn people off, and what he now brings to Team Djokovic.

In 1973, New York Times reporter Grace Lichtenstein was approached to write a book about the fledgling women's professional tour. It turned out to be a pivotal season in the sport's history, and the book concludes with an in-person account of the famous Battle of the Sexes match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The subtitle of the book is, "Behind the Scenes in Women's Pro Tennis," and Grace got to know the players--including Billie Jean--well enough to deliver exactly that. In our conversation, we talk about how the book came about, how it was received, and what press coverage was like for women's tennis in 1973. We also discuss how Billie Jean King has changed in the last half-century, the difficulty of covering tennis in such an intimate way today, and what it would take to write a behind-the-scenes look at a contemporary player such as Serena Williams.

We're up to #115 in The Tennis 128, my year-long countdown of the greatest players of the last century. Carl joins me to talk about #115 herself, Rosie Casals. We also do a book-club episode of sorts, discussing Grace Lichtenstein's 1974 book, A Long Way, Baby, which covered the 1973 WTA season, including plenty of great material on Casals. Carl and I talk about whether the 2020s game would allow for such an insider's account of a year on tour, why players seem less unique than Rosie and her peers did, and whether Casals's reputation does her justice. We consider whether today's game would be better off with top players who are more committed to competing week-in, week-out, whether 1970s-style barnstorming would open up new markets for tennis, and why Margaret Court got massacred on Mother's Day and Billie Jean straight-setted the same opponent a few months later. Also, Jeff answers a few questions about The Tennis 128 so far.

Tim Boeseler is a senior editor at Germany's Tennis Magazin, where he has been covering the sport for years. Tim joins me to talk about Michael Stich, the man ranked 123rd on my Tennis 128 list. We discuss the German tennis scene before Stich arrived, how Stich was more than just a serve-and-volleyer, and the nature of his relationship with Boris Becker--not a close one, but one that allowed them to team up to win a gold medal. We also get into the serve and volley and the strategy's best-known current exponent, Maxime Cressy. We talk s-and-v strategy, both for guys like Cressy and for other players who might benefit from mixing it up a little bit more. Finally, we dig into the nuts and bolts of how the German tennis federation works, and how it is changing.

Carl Bialik rejoins the podcast to talk about player #127 on the Tennis 128, Stan Wawrinka. We consider how he improved so late in his career, what role Magnus Norman played in the transformation, how he might have fared in other eras, and much more. We start by recapping some highlights from the Australian Open, particularly the domination of Ashleigh Barty and the difficulty of forecasting a return to form such as the one we saw from Rafael Nadal. If you've had enough Australian Open talk by now, skip to start of the Wawrinka discussion at 28:15.

Returning guest Joe Posnanski is the author of the Baseball 100, and he writes about all sports at JoeBlogs on Substack. We talk about the Australian Open--what it means for Rafa's case as the greatest of all time, if we'll ever forget about the saga that kept Djokovic out of the tournament, how Daniil Medvedev stacks up against the rest of the field, whether Ashleigh Barty is pulling away from the WTA pack, and which other women we're expecting to see emerge to challenge her. We also dive into the general subject of Greatest-of-All-Time lists, the subject of Joe's book, his current American football project, and my just-launched Tennis 128. We consider how tennis greatness differs from that of other sports, how to handle career gaps such as wars and injuries, and balancing algorithms with gut feelings. We wrap up by giving Joe a speed round of tennis GOAT questions, one toughie after another asking him to untangle the trickiest debates in the sport's history.

Gerry Marzorati is a contributor to The New Yorker and Racquet magazine, and he's the author of the new book Seeing Serena, which follows Serena Williams throughout the 2019 season as she seeks her first grand slam title as a mother. We talk about the challenges and opportunities of getting to know players through press conferences, the role of print media when players can speak directly to their fans, and how Serena compares to other mega-icons. Gerry expands on his contention in the book that Williams is the most consequential player in tennis, perhaps of all time, as someone that not only set records, but changed the way the game was played.

A digressive novel centered on a 16th-century real tennis match inspires a discussion that strays far afield from the contents of the book itself. Carl Bialik and I get into the advantages and difficulties of writing blow-by-blow descriptions of points, how many numbers is too many numbers, the various ways theatrical productions depict tennis, and why tennis fans seem so insecure.