Podcast: Ponchos and Carota Boys

Padel has emerged as a more-approachable alternative to tennis, drawing in a vast customer base eager for a sport that eschews the traditional formality often associated with tennis clubs. This shift speaks to a broader opportunity in presenting a warm front door that’s wide open for newcomers; Tennis could stand to take note.

In which a never-cruiser cruises, crushes balls, converts.

At this point, who is going to be able to make it through this meat grinder of a season? Do the the tour finals still matter no matter how many friends they lose, or people they leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way? Plus: No matter who REALLY started the conspiracy theories about courts getting slower (looking at you, Roger), you can count on Alex Zverev to whine about it.

Wherein Randi Stern attempts her best performance as Calm Person while internally panicking that she's forgotten how to hit the ball and facing questions like “What if your partner’s on fire and you’re spinning in circles like the Roomba when it gets stuck in cords?”

Every fall, the professional tennis tours descend on China. And every fall, the same Western headlines surface: empty seats, muted atmospheres, and the inevitable question, “Does China really care about tennis?”