CTC Short: The Biggest Stories in the tennis world live from Beijing!

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Episode 306: CTC Short: The Biggest Stories in the tennis world live from Beijing!

 

Dan Kiernan (00:00)

Hi guys just coming to you here from Beijing. Thought we're gonna just try something a little different to be, welcome to Control the Controllables, wanna wanna give you guys a little bit of an update in the tennis world of things that are that are going on as ever a very active week lots and lots of things happening again this week. And I want to start actually with Over in Tokyo where we had a few things happening, but we had a kind of Nishikori…

 

playing his final match in front of the Japanese crowd. A tough draw playing against Frances Tiafoe in that first round match and just a big shout out to him really on what an incredible career he's had. You know I believe the first Japanese player to ever make a Grand Slam final back in 2014 maybe. He also a little one for you on Nishikori, he's actually the third best win…

 

ratio in three sets behind Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe 72.5 percent. So how about that one? That's a little bit of a one for you to get your heads around and then also we of course had Carlos Alcaraz I think we all saw him coming back in New York and it was, just for tennis just have Carlos Alcaraz coming back. It was exciting, it was exciting in New York, and I'm sure it was exciting in Tokyo as well and he took the title, Leheka in the final and it's so good to see Carlos Alcaraz back on the tour, back to winning ways. 

 

He's announced that he's going to play a pretty strong schedule. He's playing Shanghai, he's going to play in Paris. We're going to be seeing him at the end of the finals and incredibly exciting to have him with us back in the tennis world as well. But we won't see his four, his...

 

his rival, the one that's 44 and three on the year, Jannik Sinner. We kept thinking, will we see him? Will he be back? Well, I guess the answer is no. He's not gonna be back. He's announced that his year's ended. There's cynical people out there that say there's things that need to be looked in. Think where there's after what happened to him last year with his drug ban, I think that's automatically where some people's minds go.

 

Dan Kiernan (02:25)

But certainly we'd like to see maybe a bit of transparency. It'd be great to understand what is happening with Jannik Sinner. Clearly not right. Knee injury. You know, has he had surgery? Is he having surgery? You know, certainly a bit of a worry for Jannik Sinner fans that we kept seeing him practice. We kept thinking he was going to come back, but he hasn't come back. And he's now called it a day for the full year of 2026. Will we see him back in 2027? Will we see him back in Australia?

 

But that's obviously big, big news coming out of the tennis world. Here in Beijing, we had a couple of big stories and there's still lots to go. The event you can see here on the centre court here, Gaby Dabrowski and Luisa Stefani will be playing. Actually, that's Errani and Paolini there, our opponents later today warming up. I'm not spying, I promise. But later on tonight, be playing on this beautiful court in Beijing. And I had the pleasure of sitting up there somewhere.

 

I watched whether you like it or not, the greatest male tennis player of all time Novak Djokovic the best ever and the longest win streak out of any tournament on the men's side anywhere in the world 34 and 0 he is now in Beijing seven titles hasn't played here for 11 years. I was in the I was in there in that crowd right up in there in the rafters there watching him play Alexander Zverev in an incredible match the other night.

 

And yeah, Novak Djokovic, what was interesting actually, this seems to be the place in the world that loves him the most. They were going absolutely crazy for Novak Djokovic here, you know, and he loved that. He's wanted that all of his career. He's wanted to be loved. Have no doubt as he does his farewell tour, whenever that is, it's for him to decide that he's going to get that love around the world, but he certainly was getting it here in Beijing this week.

 

Concern for Alex de Minaur who is a tough cookie as Alex so he pulled out of the final at a 7-6 down, but one love up something to do with his adductor. Seemed to be in tears afterwards obviously sitting quite nice in the race right now. Now you would imagine he's going to miss Shanghai you know a real chance for him to make the year end especially now Jannik Sinner is gone but it looks like maybe Alex de Manouir's years ended as well…

 

Dan Kiernan (04:49)

Be my guess you know for him to withdraw from a final would tell me that something's seriously not right. And it's not Alexander Bublik that this has happened to this is Alex De Minaur so so we'll see on that. The other big story we had the youngster the 16 year old son Sun Xinran. I was actually just on the shuttle with her she's young she looks young.  She was playing Coco Gauff the other day on this court…

 

in a great match 5-4 up.  And then we have the drama because you can see those lights behind me they started to flicker as the match was going on at 5-4 to Sun, in the first set as she hit a winner. Coco Gauff,  I'm sure not intentionally, but she called and it is the rule as the rule on the tour that if you have flickering lights if the screens behind change you can actually even call hindrance after the point so Coco Gauff did that. 

 

It's fully in the rules and then since then, you know, it seemed to maybe help her in that match. Sun was then seen crying at change of ends at the end of that set. 7-5 to Coco Gauff went away fully in the second set. But maybe it affected Coco as she lost to Mertens in the next round because and she would, the abuse, the racial abuse, the horrible things that she's received online, you know, she's a sensitive soul as we all are and she's someone who...

 

is a superstar and is involved in the game. She's involved with her fans and she's active and we love that but she's received a lot of horrible things. She's since pulled out of Wuhan, says she needs a little bit of time to rest her body for the year-end finals but that's obviously been a big news story here as well and then we had just behind us here and you can probably see I think it was that corner we had Daniil Medvedev you know someone who…

 

We love, Daniil Medvedev, he's great for the game, brings a great energy. We do have the 2025, you know, at the US Open, we had him go crazy at the photographer who walked on the court. We also had earlier this year, he lost 0-0 Monte Carlo, smashed a racket. So he is someone, I think, when he dives into the fire, into these real competitive situations, he loses the plot a little bit at times, does Daniil, you know? And I think we can all relate to that. You know, the performer in us.

 

Dan Kiernan (07:07)

That's what happens. And just behind us, the ball, it wasn't massively hit and anger, but ultimately he's hit a spectator in the eye. Immediate default, no option but for that to happen. And I think 10 % of life, I always say is how what happens to us, 90 % how we respond. Think Daniil didn't make any excuses. He held his hand up. He went to hospital. He met the guy that he did it to, you know, showed, you know, a lot of remorse for what happened.

 

I think any juniors listening to this or watching this, learn your lesson. Tell my son this all the time, don't hit tennis balls. They can go anywhere, you know, and we've seen it with Shapovalov a few years ago. It's dangerous until it happens and you get the shock of actually hitting somebody. We think it's not going to happen, but it absolutely can. And it happened to Medvedev against Djokovic. He was set and five- three down in an incredible match. So I'm not sure the effect of the outcome was there, but still not nice to see and hope…

 

the man who got hit in the eye by a tennis ball is doing okay. And then last, just last couple of things I want to pick up on away from Beijing, away from Asia. We obviously had Emma Navarro, who's also stopped her year, you know, being diagnosed and let us in a little bit. So well done to Emma and letting us in. The relative energy deficiency she's been diagnosed with. Fluctuating weight, something I can relate to a lot.

 

People like to judge on those things and certainly people have been judging Emma Navarro she lost a lot of weight and then she's put some weight back on linked to this but feels a lot healthier for it.  So Emma you take care of yourself well done on speaking out and we look forward to seeing you in 2027 and then my last point is just at WTA, WTA Tour have also made some announcements none bigger than there's going to be equal prize money in 2027 in the the 1000 events a long time coming…

 

something that I think we can all get behind. But I think maybe the cynic in us also goes, where's this money now going to come from? You know, think there's lots of stories going around about the WTA struggling financially. So it's going to be interesting how they balance that rightly. So it just brings back to me that why are we not acting together as tennis rather than these separate tours, these separate governing bodies. Let's all get together. This amazing sport that we all love.

 

Dan Kiernan (09:32)

Let's be tennis. Let's all work together. Let's build a sport together and move on. Wherever you are around the world, hope you are well. That's me, Dan Kiernan, coming from Beijing. And we are Control the Controllables.