No Challenges Remaining

Episode 271: Naomi Osaka Takes a Stand and Tennis Follows

UPDATE: After Osaka initially withdrew from Thursday's semifinals, she has agreed to play on Friday after the entire day of play was postponed on Thursday.
 
Postponing the semifinals of the Western & Southern Open because of continuing police violence against Black people, Naomi Osaka joined an escalating wave of anti-racism athlete activism that began in basketball and has echoed across North American sports. Tennis has been seen as remedial in recent years when it comes to athlete engagement, so Osaka's gesture was especially striking. 

Tumaini Carayol of the Guardian joins to discuss Osaka's action, what if any precedents there are for it in recent tennis memory, and where the sport goes from here, now that Cincinnati has canceled play on semifinal Thursday out of deference to the moment and that the U.S Open main draw is only days away. 

You'll also hear in this episode from Milos Raonic, who was strikingly forceful on the topics in the moments after his own quarterfinal win. 

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for following us on Twitter and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 270: Courtney's Back! (And So Is Tennis)

For the first time in two-months-but-feels-like-much-longer, Courtney returns to an NCR episode! She graces us with her presence as we discuss tennis getting back underway in earnest now with a few weeks of the WTA Tour behind us and the New York swing of "Cincinnati" and the U.S. Open rapidly approaching.

What do we make of the challenge of covering the sport remotely? Who has stood out in the on-court action we've seen so far from the women? Will this U.S. Open be "asterisked," and what does an asterisk even mean? And what do we expect and want from players in the New York bubble?

Also, Courtney discusses her burgeoning career as a Twitcher.

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for following us on Twitter and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 269: Sendhil Ramamurthy of "Never Have I Ever"

The most talked about TV show in the tennis world during this long stretch of indoor entertainment, without doubt, has been the Netflix comedy "Never Have I Ever," narrated by John McEnroe and featuring Sendhil Ramamurthy as the tennis-loving father of protagonist Devi Vishwakumar.

Sendhil doesn't just play a tennis lover on TV; the dude seriously plays and knows his tennis, and we're delighted to have him on NCR to discuss his love for tennis, working with John McEnroe, the relative lack of tennis in pop culture, and much more fun.  

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for following us on Twitter and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 268: Louisa Thomas on the Fractured World of Tennis

The New Yorker's Louisa Thomas is back with us to discuss the comprehensive piece she published about the state of tennis in these tumultuous last five months, "The Fractured World of Tennis Amid a Prolonged Pandemic."

Louisa and Ben discuss the notion of self-centeredness and tennis and how players are trained by people to potentially hurt those same people, how tennis' structure reflects both its strengths and weaknesses, the fast-approaching U.S. Open, and much more, including, inevitably, Nick Kyrgios.

It's a wide-ranging story and a wide-ranging chat, and we think you'll enjoy it.

Also, please go get Louisa's new book, Losers, for yourself and/or everyone you know! 

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for following us on Twitter and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 267: Tennis Returns, But a Rocky Road Ahead

Well, tennis is back, folks! But at the same time, tennis continues to go away. What to make of it all?

To help make sense of it all, Ben is rejoined by Reem Abulleil and Tumaini Carayol who also have been (virtually) covering the WTA's return event in Palermo this week. Is the tour set to succeed? And how do we think this sort of virtual coverage will change our work?

We also discuss the cancellation of Madrid and the new rules document from the U.S. Open, as well as the decision of defending champion Rafael Nadal to skip this year's event.

And then as a bonus at the end, you'll hear Dayana Yastremska discuss her unexpected turn as a recording artist.

(Apologies for some of the audio issues on Ben's track as this issue goes on, we did our best to make it sound decent)

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for following us on Twitter and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 266: Glenn Greenwald on Martina Navratilova

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, creator of The Intercept, joins Ben on this episode to discuss his longtime admiration of Martina Navratilova, the documentary project about that admiration he has been working on, and the hurdles that he's run into along the way as Navratilova has incurred the wrath of activists, as Glenn wrote about here at the Intercept.

We discuss Navratilova's sudden fall in LGBT sports circles, the notion of cancel culture, and also Glenn's longtime love of tennis and what he makes of the modern game.

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for following us on Twitter and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 265: Knowing When to Call It Off, with Mark Ein

Mark Ein, owner of the Citi Open ATP tournament in Washington, joins NCR for a third time this year to share what went into the decision this week to call off his tournament, after months of previous optimism that holding it might be possible even amid a pandemic.

Ben and Mark discuss the uncertainty of the moment regarding travel, why now was the time to make the decision, and what challenges the U.S. Open still needs to clear in order to go ahead.

Also, could a radical reimagining of the traveling tour structure which tennis has had allow for a more viable product during this global crisis? And what might that look like?

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for following us on Twitter and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 264: Sports Bubbles Roundtable

As sports work towards a mid-pandemic return across North America, Ben is joined by a veritable constellation of media stars across the landscape to discuss how things are progressing across various arenas, and what their successes and struggles might indicate about what's in store for the tennis tours as they plot out a mid-pandemic comeback.

The panel: Helene Elliott, sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times; Ava Wallace, reporter for The Washington Post; Lindsay Gibbs of Power Plays; and Caitlin Murray, author of The National Team.

We think you'll have a real good time listening and learning.

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that, including a new episode since last posting featuring Courtney discussing her love of The Last of Us! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!) 

As always, thanks for liking us on Facebook (leave comments on the episode thread! Engage with other listeners!), following us on Twitter, and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Episode 263: Can Tennis Stars Be Trusted to Act Responsibly? (With Reem Abulleil)

The fall out from the Adria Tour coronavirus cluster took an unexpected trip to the dance floor within a week later, with video surfacing of Alexander Zverev partying in Monte Carlo just days after being repeatedly exposed to the disease (and promising to follow health protocols) enraging people around the sport in tennis and severely damaging trust in tennis players.

To discuss the ramifications, and the notions of a code of conduct, Ben is joined by NCR's Middle East correspondent Reem Abulleil (please do support her Patreon as well!) to talk about what the tours can and can't do, the corrosive effects of selfishness in tennis, and more. 

Should tennis continue on without putting super rigid restrictions on personnel behavior in place? And if tennis has to do so much in a pandemic that it stops being fun, should it just stop all together? Big, bleak conversations are had here, but we also had a lot of fun.

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!) 

As always, thanks for liking us on Facebook (leave comments on the episode thread! Engage with other listeners!), following us on Twitter (discuss this episode with hashtag #NCR263!), and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.

Crack the Codenames With Us on Patreon!

Two programming alerts for you here, one sort of a bummer but the other one super-duper.

Firstly, we decided that the US Open roundtable episode we recorded after the press conference in New York had become instantly outdated when the positive tests started rolling in from the reckless Adria Tour, so we made the tough decision not to publish it since it was feeling obsolete.

In much happier programming news, we have some very fun stuff rolling onto our Patreon now: games of tennis-themed Codenames with Ben, Courtney, Blair Henley and Nick McCarvel! We had a TON of fun with our friends, and hope you'll have just as much watching the three-part video series, the first round of which is up now. To access these shows, and for the hook up on how to play this tennis-themed game with your own crew of tennis-loving friends, please join the 200+ wonderful listeners who are backing us on our Patreon. 

If you'd like to support our show, particularly as our normal work has disappeared along with the sport, we've launched an NCR Patreon where you can do just that! Check out our five tiers and see which might be right for you! And thank you to the many listeners who have already given their support! (And thank you to G.O.A.T. backer J O'D!)

As always, thanks for liking us on Facebook (leave comments on the episode thread! Engage with other listeners!), following us on Twitter, and subscribing/reviewing on iTunes on iTunes or whatever your podcasting app/platform of choice may be.