The Body Serve

By The Body Serve Tennis Podcast

Society & Culture

What's The Body Serve about?

Tennis podcast featuring casual, semi-respectable conversations about the ATP & WTA.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Is It Worth It?

01.17.2021

It remains to be seen if Tennis Australia's logistical balancing act to host the Australian Open will be worth it, but here we are. Amidst the tightest safety protocols yet, a nation grudgingly welcomes hundreds of tennis personnel into its ...

The Body Serve episodes:

01.17.2021 Is It Worth It? It remains to be seen if Tennis Australia's logistical balancing act to host the Australian Open will be worth it, but here we are. Amidst the tightest safety protocols yet, a nation grudgingly welcomes hundreds of tennis personnel into its ...
01.09.2021 Finding Stefanie To open our 7th season, we dive into the career of Stefanie Maria Graf, one of the game's most decorated champions and still, somehow, one of its most elusive. Graf's staggering achievements -- beyond the iconic Golden Slam -- are ...
12.11.2020 The Ending of That Was Iffy: 2020 ATP Wrap Episode 215 is our season 6 finale and the ATP companion piece to our WTA Wrap. In this episode, we spend some time discussing the on-court highlights, like Djokovic's stellar start, Nadal's 20th Slam, and Thiem's US Open crowning. But, ...
12.06.2020 Smile Because It's Over: 2020 WTA Wrap It's now a cliché to say that the events of 2020 are unprecedented, and that we feel unstuck from time itself, but early 2020 does seem of a different era. After a packed January and February, which saw a new ...
11.27.2020 sTaY sTrOnG, guys Since we last came to you, Daniil Medvedev continued his impressive end-of-season run to capture the ATP Finals in London. We take you through the paces of the final hosting of that event at the O2 Arena. After recapping the ...
11.13.2020 The Sound of the ATP's Silence We're delving into the serious allegations of domestic abuse against Alexander Zverev. Many in tennis -- including Sascha himself -- are invested in painting this as Zverev "overcoming adversity" on his way to growing up, diminishing and erasing Olya Sharypova's ...
11.07.2020 Yes or Mess: A Pop Culture Experience Grab a cocktail and dive into the pop culture garbage our tattered brains have been thinking about these past few weeks. 2020 has demanded we seek out diversions when possible, and we've got you on that front: 90 Day Fiance, ...
10.28.2020 Das ist mein Haus Alexander Zverev will be building his latest house in Cologne, Germany after nabbing back-to-back titles at the same event. The German's twin triumphs headline this abridged episode recapping the tennis events of the last two weeks. Aryna Sabalenka joined the ...
10.12.2020 I Want Your Sets The 2020 Fall French Open is in the history books! Iga Swiatek and Rafael Nadal swept through their respective fields on their ways to historic title runs in Paris. For Nadal, it was his 13th time lifting the Coupe des ...
10.06.2020 Kick Rocks, Eat Dirt Welcome to our mid-Roland Garros 2020 dispatch. Those sounds you may have heard over the last few days were those of players often being loud and wrong. We’ve got a fairly predictable final eight on the men’s side, while the ...
09.26.2020 Drip It Like It's Hot Roland Garros 2020 is upon us, en automne, barely two weeks after the US Open and perhaps against better judgment. But what happen-ed happen-ed and here we are in Paris. The cool, damp conditions will likely produce grinding and unpredictable ...
09.15.2020 Bubble Wrap: Women Save The Day It wasn’t that long ago that we didn’t think we would -- or should -- have any tennis for the rest of 2020. Now, here we are recapping the final week of a fanless U.S. Open. Naomi Osaka and Dominic ...
09.07.2020 Double Bubble, Toil, and Trouble We knew it would be an unusual first week of the US Open. It started with Benoit Paire's positive test, and continued with the double bubble regulations and warring health departments. We got non-stop drama surrounding Kiki Mladenovic's singles loss ...
08.30.2020 Be Careful Who You Association With This week saw many major stories come and go until one stuck: the breaking away of Novak Djokovic and others from the ATP Player Council to start a separate player association (not a union btw). Before that, we saw Naomi ...
08.22.2020 The Long Island Project Tennis has resumed in the US and Europe as the pandemic rages on. We catch up on a few weeks' worth of news, including: recent title winners Brady, Ferro, and Halep; early life in the Cincy/NY "bubble"; the non-sensical ramblings ...
07.31.2020 What's The Point Of The WTA If We Don't Stick Together? We are back from hiatus to bring you an episode that we have been working on for months, one that serves as a continuation of our previous dive into Pre-Open Era tennis. With tennis players now able to earn a ...
07.07.2020 When Zina Speaks, You Listen We've just had the pleasure of chatting with the legendary Zina Garrison, gold medalist in Seoul, 3-time major mixed doubles champ, and the 1990 Wimbledon runner-up. Zina chats about her origins in tennis, shares her experience as a black woman ...
07.02.2020 The Doughnut Chronicles Well folks, this is not how we envisioned bringing up our double century, but here we are! Truly, we never imagined still being here, and we owe you everything for your support in making it happen. Now, the ATP men ...
06.20.2020 A Pandemic Dahhhling, Do You Know What That Means?! So ... anything interesting happen lately? This week, tennis has swiftly put itself back together again, introducing an ambitious summer/fall schedule that includes the US Open, Roland Garros, and smaller tournaments on three continents, with nary a week of rest ...
06.11.2020 I Hope That Fish Eats You The past few weeks have felt like a watershed moment in confronting anti-black racism across the US & the world. Tennis is not impervious to this. Players like Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, and Sloane Stephens have stepped forward as key ...
05.25.2020 TBS Live: The Remix Welcome to our second ever Zoom session - The Remix, where we take listener questions, talk about Dominic Thiem's unfortunate comments and clarifications on those comments, and the larger inequities built into professional tennis. There's not much actual tennis news ...
05.17.2020 For the Quarantainment The Body Serve is back with a tennis-free episode meant to entertain you during these trying times. We've broken this rather long episode into three parts: 1) trending topics, in which we take up a few non-COVID-related topics that have ...
04.26.2020 TBS Live! This week, we attempted our very first live show on Zoom. We recorded a live TBS episode covering the bizarre news of the past week or so (think vaccines, mergers, missteps), and followed that up with some games and live ...
04.22.2020 Hidden Figures in Tennis While tennis remains on hiatus, we're diving back into the history of tennis by highlighting some fascinating players you may not be familiar with. We look at: Ora Washington, one of the premier women athletes of the 20th century, ignored ...
04.13.2020 Wiggle It Like Zina What do you know about Zina Garrison? We undertook this episode because we knew we didn’t know enough. Zina Garrison is often seen as a bridge between Althea Gibson and the Williams sisters, a trailblazer along with Lori McNeil; but, ...
04.04.2020 Stay the F#@* at Home These are strange times for the world and for tennis. We look at the rolling cancellations, the narrowing possibility that tennis will be played at all this year, and the consequences for players, tournaments, and fans. James takes you through ...
03.27.2020 For Once We Do Have The Bandwidth As promised, we’re back with part two of TBS Rewind. In this iteration, we take a look at some of the more serious topics and themes we’ve covered over the years, and reflect on what we think of what we ...
03.18.2020 TBS Rewind: Just For Laughs Things are rough right now: there is no tennis, and the world is in panic mode over the COVID-19 pandemic, so we thought we’d bring a bit of levity to the proceedings. We dived into The Body Serve archives to ...
03.11.2020 Much Ado About Something We come to you on the heels of the huge tennis news that the Indian Wells event “will not be held,” has been cancelled, postponed, whatever. We are well and truly in the dark about what the tennis schedule will ...
03.01.2020 It's Sharapover: A Complicated Affair Maria Sharapova became the richest woman in sport, a 5-time Slam champ, and one of the most polarizing figures in tennis. We have not always been Masha proponents, but it's important for us to contextualize her excellent career, her clever ...
02.23.2020 A Body Serve Over Troubled Water It's been a while since we last brought you a mailbag episode. They're fun to do, and we get to rely on our listeners to drive the conversation. Thanks to your thoughtful questions, we cover everything topics like the role ...
02.17.2020 Where's the Beef? February is always a frantic time on the tennis calendar. We've just gotten back from a quick vacation in Mexico, and are readjusting to the Toronto winter and the podcast grind. This episode has recaps of Fed Cup and two ...
02.03.2020 She's Got Spunk The 2020 Australian Open has mercifully come to a close and we’re back to complete our coverage of the decade’s first Grand Slam tournament. Your winners: Novak Djokovic, for an 8th time in Melbourne; and Sonya Kenin, who shocked the ...
01.26.2020 I Am Not A Tennis Expert The first week of this Australian Open has been something. Serena and Naomi lost on the same night Caroline Wozniacki retired from the sport, Milos Raonic is blasting his way through the men's draw, Rublev extends his win streak, and ...
01.18.2020 A Bespoke Approach to Natural Phenomena The Body Serve is back with our 6th annual (!) Australian Open preview. We break down the soon-to-be-broken draws, key first round match-ups, the dozens of floaters in the women's bracket, and whether the Big 3 stranglehold shows any signs ...
01.15.2020 ATP Sippy Cup Thank you to everybody for listening to our Monica Seles episode! We’re back to officially launch Season SIX of The Body Serve. If you’ve donated to our GoFundMe, please listen to the segment at the top of the show to ...
01.04.2020 How Do We Talk About Monica Seles? It's clear that from the moment Monica Seles arrived on the tennis stage as a precocious teenager, the tennis world didn't quite know what to do or say about her. She's been constructed as, at varying times: the grunting and ...
12.03.2019 OK, We Move to 2020, Cause That's Bull$#!t Y'all, we made it to the end of Season FIVE! First, we MUST thank you for all your generous contributions to the GoFundMe we launched last week. Truly, we are bowled over and so grateful. As for this finale, we're ...
11.24.2019 WTA Wrap 2019: But Wow, What A Moment Our penultimate episode of 2019 is exciting for 2 reasons: we get to wrap this hugely entertaining WTA season and launch our first ever crowdfunding campaign. We're asking our loyal listeners to consider throwing a few coins our way to ...
11.20.2019 Back On That Bull$#!t After this episode, we've only got two more to go before we wrap season FIVE of The Body Serve. We try and keep things on topic, but the TBS train gets a bit derailed on occasion in this one. First, ...
11.12.2019 Letter To Santa The ATP has a new fella on the rise after Jannik Sinner's bold win in Milan. Team France overcame Ash Barty and Australia in a thrilling Fed Cup final to put a bow on the WTA season. We wade into ...
11.05.2019 She Don't Bat Now, She Make Money Moves Ash Barty finesses the year-end number one ranking with a tidy and patient display in Shenzhen, with it snatching the largest ever payout in tennis history. Djokovic edges closer to both the year-end number one and the Masters 1000 record ...
10.29.2019 Say It To My Face Wow, what a moment: Episode 175. The 2019 season (our fifth doing The Body Serve) is coming to a close, and we're back to recap the last two weeks of play. The list of winners is all sorts of impressive: ...
10.14.2019 The Kids Are All Fight It's been a minute since we've covered tennis week-to-week. We're making up for lost time by speeding through the Asian/European fall swing, highlighting the huge steps taken by the ATP's younger generation, Coco Gauff's first title, and Naomi Osaka's dominance ...
10.01.2019 Toward A Better Understanding Of Pre-Open Era Tennis TBS Special: In the vein of our Pride episode from last year, we've gone and done a bit of research into the history of tennis and are coming to you with our findings on what tennis was like before and ...
09.10.2019 Racing With Destiny Bianca Andreescu busted out in a big way at the U.S. Open, beating Serena Williams in straight sets to win her first Slam title. For Serena, it was a 4th finals loss since coming back from having baby Olympia. And ...
09.02.2019 D.A.R.E. to Dream We come to you midway through the US Open after a first week stuffed with feel-good stories and breakout stars on the women's side, and lots of miserable, crabby men (with the exception of Gael Monfils). We chat extensively about ...
08.24.2019 Brace Yourselves We're back to preview the US Open, the final major of the year. Can Naomi defend? Will last year's umpire drama dominate the fortnight? Did the summer tell us anything about who's a real contender on the men's side? Plus, ...
08.20.2019 From Cincy To Cow Corner We're back safe and sound in Toronto after covering the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati. On episode 169, we put a bow on the event chatting everything from the quarter-finals onward, culminating in Madison Keys and Daniil Medvedev as ...
08.16.2019 If It's Not One Scam, It's Another We're pleased to bring you a chat with 2-time major champ Svetlana Kuznetsova, who was one of our first player interviews back in 2016. She chats with us about the problems with her visa, her beautiful dog Dolce, and her ...

Older episodes

The Body Serve

What's The Body Serve about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Body Serve episodes:

Is It Worth It?

Finding Stefanie

The Ending of That Was Iffy: 2020 ATP Wrap

Smile Because It's Over: 2020 WTA Wrap

sTaY sTrOnG, guys

The Sound of the ATP's Silence

Yes or Mess: A Pop Culture Experience

Das ist mein Haus

I Want Your Sets

Kick Rocks, Eat Dirt

Drip It Like It's Hot

Bubble Wrap: Women Save The Day

Double Bubble, Toil, and Trouble

Be Careful Who You Association With

The Long Island Project

What's The Point Of The WTA If We Don't Stick Together?

When Zina Speaks, You Listen

The Doughnut Chronicles

A Pandemic Dahhhling, Do You Know What That Means?!

I Hope That Fish Eats You

TBS Live: The Remix

For the Quarantainment

TBS Live!

Hidden Figures in Tennis

Wiggle It Like Zina

Stay the F#@* at Home

For Once We Do Have The Bandwidth

TBS Rewind: Just For Laughs

Much Ado About Something

It's Sharapover: A Complicated Affair

A Body Serve Over Troubled Water

Where's the Beef?

She's Got Spunk

I Am Not A Tennis Expert

A Bespoke Approach to Natural Phenomena

ATP Sippy Cup

How Do We Talk About Monica Seles?

OK, We Move to 2020, Cause That's Bull$#!t

WTA Wrap 2019: But Wow, What A Moment

Back On That Bull$#!t

Letter To Santa

She Don't Bat Now, She Make Money Moves

Say It To My Face

The Kids Are All Fight

Toward A Better Understanding Of Pre-Open Era Tennis

Racing With Destiny

D.A.R.E. to Dream

Brace Yourselves

From Cincy To Cow Corner

If It's Not One Scam, It's Another

Other shows like The Body Serve: