[changeofends]

seeing daniil bantering with that twink lacoste paired him with for promo doubles..... to the anon who asked me if daniil is too old to be bisexual what if i told you that in my beautiful mind he is already an extremely specific ultrarare type of gay man

[sosashawtyy]

[changeofends]

@ daniil MEDVEDEV

[changeofends]

daniil medvedev closing out the win to get back in the top 10 with an ace.. so auraful so thematically cohesive

[changeofends]

medveball MOVES me man...

[changeofends]

literally thought this match would be a 6-3 6-1 lashing um .

[changeofends]

here it comes

[changeofends]

literally thought this match would be a 6-3 6-1 lashing um .

[hincapiero]

[escuerzoresucitado]

[changeofends]

i was gonna make a joke abt how my deep rooted apathy towards australian athletes is such that i lowkey stopped caring about dasha kasatkina's career after her nationality switch but i think a non insignificant part of that has to do with how she got citizenship insanely quickly meanwhile i've been living here for 10+ years and i'm quite literally a few weeks away from potentially getting deported out of this country

[changeofends]

deportation CANCELLED

[changeofends]

stefaniil in the big 2026, its happening

meanwhile medvedev losing to tsitsipas in straights in big 2026:

[changeofends]

i was gonna make a joke abt how my deep rooted apathy towards australian athletes is such that i lowkey stopped caring about dasha kasatkina's career after her nationality switch but i think a non insignificant part of that has to do with how she got citizenship insanely quickly meanwhile i've been living here for 10+ years and i'm quite literally a few weeks away from potentially getting deported out of this country

[changeofends]

this is my 3rd year regularly watching tennis but i still don't feel like i'm able to engage with tennis on a technical level. you seem very knowledgable - do you have any tips or resources you would recommend to learn more? thank you!!

thank YOU for thinking so! i don't feel like an expert at all but i do really try to engage with tennis on a technical level when i'm watching like you. ifl the biggest factor that's helped w this is simply just accumulating a lot of watchtime which unfortunately will only come with.. time lol, so keep watching & paying attention!

i did play tennis when i was younger, but imo it rly only helps w spotting things specifically wrt technique e.g. grip changes, service motions, footwork, not much abt e.g. strategy. i'm sure there's plenty of online resources regarding technique tho.

i think the hardest thing abt trying to seek out resources to learn about technical analysis of tennis is that so much of technical analyses of tennis out there is just...dogshit nonsense lol. and when u don't know anything it's hard to tell what's bullshit or not. but use your usual critical thinking skills, e.g. what biases might they have, what agenda do they have that might make them cherrypick data or misinterpret the bigger picture, and so on. i'll give 2 examples - ik many ppl hail gill gross as a font of knowledge with insightful analyses, and tbh i would recommend him for an accessible entry to technical analysis! but once u learn past the surface level i found there's so many little things abt his takes that grate me lol, bc u can tell when he's making shit up and covering it with common-sense cliches that sound vaguely reasonable. another example is jim courier, who dgmw 100% has an elite level of ball knowledge! but i personally find him hard to listen to sometimes bc you can definitely see his biases and whenever a player isn't playing exactly the way he thinks they should he starts getting extremely snarky and judgemental abt it. he's sort of like american mark petchey, but i could go on and on complaining about commentators lol. just keep it in mind when u come across other ppl's takes, never take anything at face value even if they sound very confident in delivering it!

as far as resources i can recommend, i'd definitely recommend learning how to interpret match stats. it's very simple, just know what each one means and how you can use that to make judgements about a player's performance. you can infer a large part of what happened in most matches just by looking at serve/return stats so it makes a big difference to pay attention to them. a decent 1st serves in% should be around mid 60s-70s, a good 1st serves won% differs by tour and player but e.g. a high tier atp/tbh even wta player should be ranging in around 70s-80s. tennisabstract.com is a fun resource if you want to have a play around w more detailed stats.

this is a tip i advise you take with a grain of salt bc it's sth that i've only developed for myself and hasn't rly been... tested or corroborated lol, but when i think abt matchup dynamics i try to think of it in the 3 axes (or dimensions) of the court: height (topspin vs flat hitting), depth (of shot, but also baseline vs net play), and ad-deuce (fh vs bh). it's just a prompt to get you thinking more than anything but i found it works quite well for me as a bouncing off spot, although it's not comprehensive ofc.

in terms of ppl i recommend, matthew willis (mattheracquet)'s substack was probably foundational to my technical understanding of tennis lol he was amazing (rip his substack). joseph wofford on twitter has great live threads and analysis. this is a bit of a weird one but blurryturtle in degensclub writes matchup previews for all the slams, and idfk how he does it, like does he keep up w both wta/atp down to 125k/challengers level?? anyway he gives a general or historical context to a match even w relatively unknown players so i can always learn sth new abt a player by reading them. ik ppl like hugh clarke/threadoforder on substack for atp too.

but yeah just read or watch as many takes and analyses as you can and you'll eventually pick up enough to decide for your own which parts from others to keep and which ones to discard basically! be aware of dunning kruger in others and urself, be aware of the broader historical or cultural context, and you don't have to have a take on something if you don't know enough aboutcom it, which is how i feel 99% of the time. and remember in tennis matchup is king, and therefore h2h is king!

[changeofends]

https://www.tumblr.com/changeofends/806346723733700608/wow-david-kane-is-asking-good-questions-in-the

Did you by any chance mean Ben Rothenberg? Because from what I know of David Kane, he can be pretty superficial with his tennis. I judge journalists and tennis media based on how they talk about less flashy or lower ranked players; he was on the mini break podcast to discuss the top 10 and just brushed past Fritz and DeMinaur like there was nothing useful to be learned from talking about their 2025 and upcoming seasons. But he will talk about Taylor Swift or Real Housewives for 20 mins and then skip straight to Alcaraz. So probably not the journalist you’re referring to

no that david kane is exactly who i was referring to! his online presence is exactly why i was surprised he was asking good questions in press conferences although ik he's been doing them for a while (maybe that's why he privated his twitter acc lol). i did talk about rothenburg in the tags of that post tho

[changeofends]

anyway i was at a bar on friday night where they had sinner djokovic playing on the giant tv and i was the only person there rooting for djokovic lmfao sorry i love to see evil triumph

[changeofends]

one slam wonders | all that wanting, right? by devin kelly

[changeofends]

i really don't know how to feel.... so much of elena's public identity as a player since 2022 was based on winning one slam that half of the tennis circuitry thought didn't count anyway. for one, she was going up against a massive crowd favourite top player with an attractive playstyle on grass, and two, many of the top wta players were missing that year for reasons ppl facetiously thought should have applied to elena as well. in short, the defining moment of her career (and the biggest one until now) was a win the public believed she didn't deserve to have, and from that point onwards she spent her career endlessly walking backwards towards that moment with a burden of proof hanging over her.

while it's (imo) always been clear that elena differentiates herself from the slew of one slam wonders in the wta bc of the role she played in challenging iga's 2022 - 2023 dominance, there's a false dichotomy in tennis between one slam wonders (who are seen as good but ultimately untalented players who got lucky) and multiple slam winners, who are granted an unquestioned level of legitimacy in their legacy as top players. imo elena was occupying a very interesting space in the middle of this dichotomy that challenged these cultural notions and to be honest, i would have been perfectly happy if she had ever only won one slam in her whole career, and i personally never felt that it was inevitable or that elena 'was too good of a player' to not have a second slam eventually. clearly she has picked up momentum since wta finals last year - and speaking of which i really don't want to think about the ways in which this win validates the vukov partnership - but this win is such a redefining moment for her identity and legacy and it feels so surreal to witness and most of all i wonder what will drive her forward now that she has proven the one thing tennis as a cultural institution has demanded from players like her and she is no longer tethered to that one wimbledon title, like a taut rubber band finally breaking under the tension, rather than snapping back.