Points To Defend | Tennis Podcast

Points to Defend is back and better than ever! New logo, posts on social, and a new starting point - the first Wimbledon in two years - what better way to start a glow up. Everyone loves the grass court season, no one quite as much as Andy Murray and Nick Kyrgios, making their return to The Championships in incredible form - albeit thanks to the fans on centre court. Murray looks like the British icon of old, shouting at himself no matter the scoreline. We unfortunately lost Serena Williams early in the tournament - but what an outfit and in the brief 6 games she played she had the whole court watching her. Roger Federer kicked off his quest for a 9th Wimbledon title in mixed fashion, showing us maybe clay is his new favourite surface. He did look good whilst doing it though. We can't really look past Novak Djokovic either, bullying poor Jack Draper by letting him have the first set before crushing him in 4 and making Kevin Anderson relive his 2018 loss to the world no.1. The WTA are quickly losing their top seeds, with 3 of the top 10 left in the draw, whilst the likes of Carla Suarez Navarro and Kiki Bertens bowed out of their last Wimbledon in style. With slips and upsets across the board, the first two rounds of The Championships really have given us the content we missed out on last year. 

With clay tournaments coming thick and fast over the last few weeks, we had some new faces prevail and some older heads staying true to their winning mantras. Stefanos Tsitsipas won his maiden Masters 1000 with a flawless week in Monte Carlo, beating the likes of Rublev, Garin and the ever-impressive Karatsev on the way to his first title. Stefanos is surely looking like the next king of clay after an 18-set unbeaten streak on the surface. Rafa started the tournament in classic Rafa fashion, but was undone by Rublev in the semi-finals, starting a streak of difficult matches for the Spaniard as he looked to capture another title on Pista Rafa Nadal. Novak Djokovic, making his first appearance since AO, lost in remarkable fashion to Dan Evans, the Brit overwhelming the world no.1 in straight sets on his least favourite surface. 

Barcelona came about, and Rafa dropped the opening set of his first match to Ilya Ivashka, sparking a week of unforced errors and double faults. Despite this, Nadal was able to capture a 12th Barcelona final, besting Tsitsipas in the final after the longest match of the season so far at 3:38. The two went back and forth, Rafa having 2 championship points in the second before the Greek eventually took it to a third. Tsitsipas had another fantastic week in Spain, beating the likes of Auger-Aliassime and Jannik Sinner on his way to the final.

In Stuttgart, Ash Barty showed everyone why she deserves to be world no.1 with yet another title to her name, doing the double quite literally and picking up the doubles title as well. The Australian bested Sabalenka in the final, off the back of her own impressive week, who sadly picked up an adductor injury in the second set. The Belarusian beat the likes of Simona Halep, fresh off a shoulder injury, to make the final before sadly falling short to Ash - but took the loss well on social media. Ash was untouchable throughout the week though, coming from a set and a break down to beat Svitolina, who herself had to come through Kerber and Kvitova. She became the first woman to secure both the singles and doubles titles at Stuttgart.

The women have already started in Madrid, with Muguruza sadly having to pull out of the tournament with a left thigh injury. Ash has started strong again, beating Shelby Rogers in what we think is their fourth meeting this season, whilst current RG champion Swiatek started the week with a convincing 6-1 6-1 first round victory - her first tournament since the French Open.

We end on some positive news, firstly the return of Roger Federer in Geneva this year before playing the French Open, and secondly a massive congratulations to Carla Suarez Navarro for beating cancer!

The Miami Open gave us surprises in both the ATP and WTA draws, with the lowest ranked men's final at the tournament since 1985. Hubert Hurkacz and Jannik Sinner both made their Masters 1000 final debuts, with the Polish star running out eventual winner after a dominant performance in the final. This maiden title takes Hubie to 16th in the rankings, whilst Sinner moves up to 23rd at only the age of 19 - god we're both old.

Ash Barty defended her 2019 (yes, 2019) Miami Open crown in a convincing fashion with wins over Victoria Azarenka, Aryna Sabalenka and Elina Svitolina before a walkover in the final against Bianca Andreescu. Andreescu was on court for over 10 hours before sadly succumbing to an injury, but stole the show this week alongside Coco, her camera-shy dog.

Sebastian Korda made waves with his first top-10 victory over, you guessed it, Diego Schwartzman. He just loves giving these upcoming stars their first big wins (FAO Musetti and Karatsev).

Karatsev couldn't expand on his Dubai winning form, but the latest 'Race to Turin' ranking see's him up in 5th alongside the likes of Djokovic, Medvedev and Fucsovics - fresh off completing the Fucsovics-Rublev trilogy.

Sakkari had yet another outstanding tournament, bagelling Naomi Osaka in the quarterfinals whilst also having great matches against Samsonova and Pegula - the latest in a long line of talented young Americans on the WTA.

Halep couldn't overcome a shoulder injury that plagued her since her opening match, a day which saw her, Barty, Sabalenka and Elina all face a bit of trouble in their opening sets. 

But the real winner was Svitolina herself, tying the knot with Gael Monfils after a turbulent few months and bagged herself (potentially) a new car from the same old man. Points to Defend and Milos Raonic are three very happy people #July2021

We're back with a bumper two-week episode, and there's a LOT to talk about.

Djokovic broke the record for most weeks at world number one with 311, which is now a little longer because we forgot to mention it before but that's been rectified here.

Federer was back in Doha and looked good in his three setters despite falling to eventual champion Basilashvili, while Muguruza finally won a title in her third final of the year in Dubai.

St Petersburg appropriately had an all-Russian semi final lineup with 'Russian wall' Daria Kasatkina winning her second title of the year, the first home player to win the tournament, and we reflected on her journey over the last few seasons and how she sums up the state of the WTA Tour.

This week saw Rublev's ATP 500 streak finally snap in Dubai where he lost to Karatsev. And we really need to talk about Karatsev, who won his first tour title at the ripe age of 27 and gave us Djokovic-domination vibes.

Over in Acapulco, Zverev survived an earthquake to come through to the final and beat Tsitsipas, while last year's Rome favourite Lorenzo Musetti returned to show he can keep beating the top guys.

We look at Genie Bouchard's last few years since going top five and making the Wimbledon final, and ask everyone to cut her a bit of slack, then get excited about teen favourites Clara Tauson and Leylah Annie Fernandez winning titles.

And then it's over to the Miami Open where we compare and contrast the loaded WTA draw with the noticeably scaled back ATP draw and do our favourite thing - make predictions that ultimately never come true. 

Roger Federer is back on the ATP tour for the first time in over a year, making his comeback at Doha against Dan Evans 14 months after his falling short to Novak Djokovic in the AO semi-final. 

The road to the final won't be easy for the Swiss maestro, with a predicted draw matching him up with the likes of Dan Evans, Denis Shapovalov and Andrey Rublev on his quest to his 104th title - but one of us still thinks he can do it.

Rublev showed he was the king of ATP 500s by winning his fourth in a row in Rotterdam, and Kvitova showed she was the queen of Doha yet again with a near identical victory to 2018 over Muguruza in the final, her third Doha final in four years.

We've also discovered the Cerundolo brothers as Juan Manuel made it a 100% record on the ATP Tour, winning the Cordoba title in his debut tour-level tournament, while brother Francisco almost followed suit making the Argentina Open final a week later and losing to Schwartzman.

Swiatek, the likeable and marketable WTA star still relatively new on the block impressed by winning Adelaide and mild-mannered Goffin and RBA contested the Montpellier final with David coming out on top.

And then it's all Roger, with some predictions for ATP Doha and WTA Dubai thrown in too.

We also embarrassingly forgot to mention Novak Djokovic's insane new record of 311 weeks at world number one, sorry to the number one of being number one but we'll get to it next week.

The Aus Open is done and dusted for another year, and we have our champions. Novak Djokovic makes it 18 Slams, half now coming on Rod Laver Arena, and Naomi Osaka becomes the first player in almost a decade to make it to 4 Majors.

Also during the second week we had great runs to the finals from Medvedev and 'Do you prefer Jenny or Jennifer?' Brady, amazing wins from Serena before she struggled against Naomi and left people questioning whether she was retiring, match points saved by our eventual champion against Muguruza, an injured Thiem lost to a Dimitrov who then got injured and lost to Slam debutant Karatsev, who had a dream run to the semis. 

After a whole host of injuries during the AO, last year's champion Sofia Kenin revealed that she had surgery for appendicitis and ploughed through three tournaments in three weeks, despite mostly early losses, before realising.

And we look ahead to some of this week's ATP and WTA tournaments in Adelaide, Montpellier, Cordoba and Singapore - and another potential clash between each of our faves, this time Jamie's Jannik Sinner is projected to play Andy Murray.

Just in the nick (Kyrgios? lol sorry) of time before the second week begins, we're here to guide you through all the biggest and best talking points and matches from week one, and go back over the many ATP and WTA matches held in Melbourne Park last week.

The state of Victoria has gone into a five-day lockdown, meaning the incredible, lively, and sometimes just very drunk crowds that we've all loved hearing over the last week have had to go - quite literally in the middle of Djokovic v Fritz. 

We've had some incredible finals-worthy clashes from Shapovalov, Sinner, Halep, Tomljanovic, Tsitsipas, Kokkinakis, Thiem, and of course the king of Hisense / Melbourne / John Cain Arena - Kyrgios.

There have also been tough and teary losses for the likes of Kenin and Monfils, core injuries galore for Djokovic and Berrettini, and a back injury finally starting to get better for Nadal - the man subject to the finger from a presumably drunk Svitolina fan in the crowd earlier this week.

We also touch on some of last week's winners and runners up like Barty (the party is on), Felix, Russia, Italy and more. And of course nothing is complete without a prediction - we're guessing who the finalists and winners will be next weekend in Melbourne Park, and we're disagreeing.

Points to Defend is back with the first episode of 2021! The 'Day at the Drive' exhibition saw the best of the best line up in front of a sold out crowd in Adelaide, giving us all a glimpse that there is an end in sight! The tag-team of Djokovic and Krajinovic (thanks to an unlikely hand blister plaguing the world no.1) lined up against the exciting Jannik Sinner, whilst Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka saw their 2018 US Open final replayed in hot sun of Australia. Nadal and Thiem took to the court for the first match of the night session quickly followed by world no.1 and no.2 Ash Barty and Simona Halep, the former making her first appearance since the Australian Open last year. We also looked ahead at the two WTA events happening in Melbourne this week, with top names appearing at both Gippsland and Yarra Valley - the stacked line up giving no clue as to who's winning either one. The ATP Cup returns with the world's best players representing their countries, and we pick our favourites to win each group and the strongest players to miss out (we see you Sinner). Finally, a bit of quarantine drama, because this tennis lot can't seem to stay out of the spotlight at the moment. 

A Day in the Drive: 0:00 - 13:48

WTA Events: 13:48 - 16:56

ATP Cup: 16:56 - 26:56 

Quarantine Drama: 26:56 - 37:09

12 years on from the first ever Nitto ATP Finals at the O2 Arena, won by a Russian against a first time US Open winner, we have the same fate! Daniil Medvedev outlasted Dominic Thiem in an instant classic to capture his first year-end title, beating the likes of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic on the way. It's the first time any player has defeated the top three seeds on their way to the title, and caps off a fantastic end to the season for the World Number Four after his maiden Paris Bercy Masters 1000 win. As well as this, we also talk about Sabalenka's fine run at Linz, continuing her streak during the WTA Asian swing, and a surprise appearance for Yas on #MuzzMonfATP. Find out about how she got on with Andy and Gael and told the former World Number One her outrageous prediction for the Olympics next year!

Two podcasts in one week? We know x

We provide an update on new statements from Zverev and the ATP regarding Olya Sharypova's abuse allegations before getting into this week's tennis and previewing the final year at the o2. 

It's the day Jamie's been waiting for as his favourite player ever Jannik Sinner wins his maiden ATP title in Sofia, we look back at this week in Sofia as well as Linz, previewing tomorrow's final between doubles partners Sabalenka and Mertens. Then it's onto the Nitto ATP Finals in its last year at the o2 Arena in London, we go through the groups and the very obvious group of death, predict who will make the semi finals and sort of predict who will win the entire thing. Also this week, Gael Monfils announced he would be live streaming with Andy Murray on Twitch to preview the ATP Finals themselves and stream every night after a day of play to discuss, so we talk about their preview stream and how nice it is to see active players creating easy and fun tennis content.