RAFA JODAR: TENNIS' NEW VILLAIN? | SVITOLINA & MONFILS PART WAYS | EPISODE 60 | THE BIG T - VIVENDI

So, June, did you ever have a trauma like he did at that 8-all tiebreaker? He hit the worst underhand serve. It wasn't even like a little spinner. He literally just hit it up in the air, and it was like, what just happened? It was like an incredible meltdown at 8-All in the tiebreaker after having a big lead. So, I'm pretty amazed that he's been able to just overcome all of this. The Big T! The BigT! Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of your favorite podcast of the week and every week which is The Big T. I'm Andrea Petkovic. I am back with my kitchen and BG is opposite from me. And Brad, I have to give you props again. Last week I gave you props for watching every match that exists on the planet Earth. This week I have give you a props because you are a true gentleman. I was not five minutes late, not 20 minutes late. But I've been now three and a half hours late for the recording of this podcast. And you waited patiently in your seat for me to show up. Thank you so much. And next time I see you, you will get a present from me. I don't know what but I will make it happen. What do you have planes, trains and automobiles? You have a strike there? What happened it was it was a whole day it would be too much to get into all the details but i was contemplating at one moment to take an air balloon because that would have at least gotten me to where i needed to go but i got there in the end it was just very delayed all right now let's get to some real stuff come on yes yeah no no it was and to be fair i have to give props to the people that were supporting me and everybody else trying to get places they were so nice even though it was a very stressful situation everyone was very helpful and that's not always the case so i wanted to give props to the people there but we also have to give prompts bg to get right into it without further ado to maya kvalinska and to davidovich for kina who are the great champions in china once more davidovic for kena beat hodar in an all-spanish final in shanghai and maya valinska A surprise and not a surprise because she showed us in Roland Garros what she's capable of doing. But wow, what a performance for her to win Wuhan against Sanai Kartel in the final. What did you make of our two finals over there? Okay, well, first let's go to Kartel. She was ranked 170, so the Vacheron effect was in. And Maya Frelinska, who played brilliantly at the French, God, it had to be one of the shortest WTA finals ever, both about 5-4, if that. And do you know what her record was since the French Open heading to Asia? Literally, she had only won one match before she got to the semis of Singapore. So pretty amazing that all of a sudden, you know, sometimes you have success. It takes a little bit of time to get used to. and she really found her game there and just navigated that tournament but there's a lot of opportunity and she was the one that took advantage a lot of players lost early there yeah and that's interesting that you say that because both players and this is something where we have to keep in mind both players had their own fair share of injuries and cartel for example she started great in the season she's good friends with abigail who is one of our colleagues at tennis channel and i remember very well abigail telling me at the australian open watch out for cartel she's had an incredible off season and she's going to do amazingly well and then she got injured i believe it was her lower back so she couldn't play and train as much and i mean you've seen her she's a training machine she can be out there for hours she doesn't get tired she puts in the work she loves going to the gym she's just one of these players that is sneakily good You don't see the huge weapon, but she does everything well. And the same really goes for Maja Chwalinska, who very tragically, and I called that match, so that's why I have it in the forefront of my mind, in Wimbledon, where she was about to sort of start playing well again after taking a little while after the French Open. She was up a set and a match point and then injured herself, Brad. And she finished the match, but She could barely walk. you could see that she was just not really capable of playing anymore, but she didn't want to retire, so she sort of saw it through. But that was really tragic. I think she was up a set and 5-2, if I remember. Do you remember that match? Yeah, I know she did. Yeah, set and five-two. And they have similar styles. They both have good forehands. They play with a lot of spin. They play mit a lot. They play a lot with a height over the net. It was kind of like a match that, like, really, this is what we're seeing in the final. But I felt like both of them beat a lot good players and it was a great opportunity but and obviously you know we're continuing to see zabalenka lose early and um there's a lot of opportunity and i feel like in asia if you're mentally strong at the end of the year that's one of those times of the year where points can be had so this is my question to you after the us open the last third of the season, do you think tennis IQ comes more into play? So the reason I bring that up is I remember very well when I started getting into stats a little bit and I was looking at numbers and I Was sort of, you know, sourcing numbers wherever I could. I found this crazy statistic that said that Caroline Wozniacki until the US Open, when she was number one in the world, won about, I want to say, I might be guessing a little bit, but the gist of the story is true. I want you to know that BG won a lot of matches. I want say she won like 56% or 57% of her matches until the U.S. Open. And after the U!S. Open, if I remember correctly, to be fair, this was 10 years ago, she was winning over 70% of the matches after the US Open, which speaks to your point, BG. She was always very mentally strong. She was also always physically fit. and she really played with smarts she made your her opponents miss she didn't really she had her backhand was amazing but she didn'T like out hit people she outsmarted outplayed people and so it was never a surprise that she did so well after the US Open and do you think those type of characteristics help you more when everybody is tired yeah there's no doubt because players in that, you know, on the women's side, Asia is much longer than men's. It's six, seven weeks. And I call it a lot of players easily tap out. And if you literally can convince yourself that I'm not tired, I'm Not physically tired, not mentally tired. And this is where I can make a big part of my season success. So in you're bringing up Wozniacki, somebody who makes you beat her and both these players in frilinska and cartel they make you beat them so maybe that's why they're fit and this played into their game it remember last year when vashera won in um shanghai it was unbelievably hot it wasn't that hot this year i saw people wearing parka so it was a different you know scenario but i saw an incredible stat you brought up about fokina who beat hodar in that final go figure that we lose escape from alcaraz third round and we get an all spanish final it's crazy yeah before the aussie open of 26 hodar was ranked i believe 150 and for linska was ranked 145 you know what their ranking is after this week tell me they're both 11 that's that's one of those bastion stats that he's great at finding those at it's like so they were like 295 combined now they're 22 it's pretty amazing the success of both of them yeah it's it's funny i love these weird synchronicities in tennis that sometimes happen and then there is no further knowledge from there but it's just a weird funny fact that i really love about it and folkina had lot of injuries missed a lot of time and he's really picked up his game in asia a little bit like you talked about wasniacki what we saw from late he's the kind of guy that makes you beat him and when you haven't played for a while you're not mentally tired you you if anything you're more eager to get some matches to see if you can get a littlebit of like momentum going yeah and maybe he needed a little while because i remember very well talking to you about it during the the French Open, BG, when there was this whole drama about his coach and who was guilty and who left who and who left the court before the other one. And was he fired or did he just quit? Nobody knew what was really going on. There was a little drama going on. And sometimes people forget that also emotionally sometimes players get upset. And that can be also tiring just as much as physically. So maybe he needed a while to settle in new team new coach and now he's playing really well again and we have to talk about it I know all the Tennis Channel fans we have such loyal fans who watch so much tennis they know that Davidovic Fekina was notoriously known for squandering big opportunities squandring match points squandoring leads I remember so well in Delray Beach when he had two match points against Miamia Kicmanovic to win his first title then he had that lead against Alex Diminor in Washington in D.C. that he squandered. And I'm honestly so relieved and so happy that he got over that hump of winning his first title. And ever since then, this blockage in his head seems to have evaporated because he's now piling up the titles and he doesn't have that weird notion that he can't do it because tennis wise, BG, he always had the chops, didn't he? So beyond losing those couple of finals that you said that he had lost where he had great opportunities, I was courtside in Washington, served for the match. He served for the match in Delray Beach. That guy lost so many matches versus good players when he was up 5-2 in the third and the round of 16 and 5. So he had lots of heartbreaks. But maybe one of these lucky things that whatever happened with Puerta, you know, now he's with the veteran coach and Pepe Clavette, who's had a lot of success with a lot of different players so and I believe that he had worked with Fokina one other time before and maybe this has been you know one of those things where you go back to a coach that knows you like pretty well I think he's one of these guys that maybe getting the first title too out of nowhere he gets it on grass yeah yes in his home country so true maybe that freed him up because now he seems like he's a completely different player well and I want to hear your thoughts on what do you think changed with, because this is, it sort of became like a trauma almost in his head, right? That he couldn't get over the hump. What do you think did he change? And one more thing that I remembered, I remember Jim, our beloved colleague, Jim Correa, asking Alex Diminor who he would rank in the top three of fastest guys, himself, of course, included. And I remember very well, that was two years ago, he named Carlos Alcaraz himself and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. And, I never forgot that, you know, the locker room reputation sort of always followed him of how quick and explosive he is. He's an incredible mover. He slides, he glides. He probably just had this huge reputation of a guy that couldn't finish got tight and I think a lot of times maybe sometimes you need one lucky break you win one of these matches that you've blown and then belief can go from like zero to like you know whether or not it was just winning a Mallorca or winning one of those matches I once saw him play Rune at Wimbledon on court 18. And he was way up in the fifth set breaker. And it ate all. Literally I was like I can't believe I just saw what he did. He hit an underhand serve that popped up. It was like the worst underhand serve. It wasn't even like a little spin serve or whatever. And the guy ran in and put it away. And then I think the year before on the same court, didn't he hit a ball and get defaulted it's like a guy had nightmares on that court 18 but that underhand serve that he hit against rune at eight all in the tiebreaker and a fifth that was almost like what just happened there and and for a guy to be able to go through what he has i believe that it's the belief and more than anything you know what happens to when you see guys and women falter they stop working hard so and then you maybe you lose that edge the guy looks like he's fit as a fiddle he he kept working hard it was like zabalenka getting through her servos that she didn't drop off a cliff and other parts didn't get dragged down so i think sometimes you just need one little thing maybe one result can change a lot i'm i'm so i have i have no relation to him but I'm somehow, I want to say proud. That's the word that comes to me. I'm so proud of him because I know how hard it is to break through patterns, whether they are physical or mental. As a tennis player, you just have your rhythms and you have your traumas and you Have your thought patterns that is so difficult to break out of and to see him get through that. I really I have to say I'm so proud Of him and so happy for him. And it was amazing. So June, did you ever have a trauma like he did at that eight all tiebreaker. He hit the worst underhand serve. It wasn't even like a little spitter. He literally just hit it up in the air. And it was like, what just happened? It was like an incredible meltdown at eight all into tiebreaker after having a big lead. So I'm pretty amazed that he's been able to just overcome all of this. Me too. Me, too. And BG, if we get into my traumas, then we will be here for another three hours. And you already waited for me for So I wouldn't want to put you through this. Oh, we will do a bonus episode on just my traumas alone. But let's move on to Rafa Hodar and just speak about him for a little while because he has now had a few run-ins. I'm trying to be careful about this word because during the French Open, there was a video where it seemed like he pushed the ball girl. And I really have to say about this, that's why I didn't want to really bring it up because that video looked bad. But from a different angle, you could see that he didn't do anything to the ball, though. That's number one. However, there have been a few situations, BG, with Rafa Hodar, where our producer Gary wrote into our running order, is Rafa Hosar the villain of the ATP Tour? What's your answer to that, Bg? Okay, first of all, you know, what an amazing first year the guy's had on tour. he's got a great chance to make the year-end championships he's got a team of one just his dad he doesn't have any but probably okay the reason why Gary could say that about a villain there's a lot of things that happen on a court but one thing that is inexcusable if you've ever been a ball kid and know that like some of these kids are nervous doing it you could never lose it on a ball kit I feel like losing it on a ball kid should be less than losing it on an umpire. And, okay, you don't exactly know what the exact ramifications what happened in Paris. The one where he literally snapped about not getting his towel and swearing at a ball kids, to me, is inexcusable. That's your line. That's for you where you draw the line. Ball kits or ball people are just for you out of – they can never be attacked. Yeah, and I understand players lose it. We've seen Medvedev lose it a lot, players snapping. That should be off limits. So he should literally watch that video, learn from it. If he gets mad, it should never have anything to do with the ball person again because I feel like that's controllable. losing and snapping at an umpire sometimes or a decision on court or yourself your opponent anything not a ball person who's very vulnerable and most of the tournaments to be fair it is we have the u.s open we have a few uh places in the u.S. where the ball crew is really a ball crew where everybody can apply and be a ball group member but most of them are not and most tournaments still work with kids so it is it is a very bad look when you when you i don't want to say attack it's not like he physically attacked the kid but when he snapped yes yes when you snap at the kid that's because especially because they are children but then again the one thing that i i don'T want to defend it because it's i DON'T think it is but one thing THAT i TRY TO KEEP IN MIND HE'S 19 YEARS OLD HE'S BEEN THROWN INTO THE CIRCUS JUST THINK ABOUT IT ONE YEAR AGO HE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE BALL KIDS YOU KNOW what i mean he was playing on little challenger tournaments where he probably had to get his own balls that's how far off from the very top of the tennis world he is he's only a teenager he's 19 years old so i give him a little grace but you're right it can't continue to happen otherwise well he just i think he just turned 20 now and he did apologize he did apologise and i think that hopefully somebody showed him that and that's one thing he should be adamant about this will never happen again yeah and and he's a very cool customer but it's interesting on some players when they do snap their snap is a little more and you're a little bit surprised so he definitely has it a little Bit in his game but I mean I'm it just you don't want to think about something like that you want to think about more what he's accomplished this year and where he's headed because you you feel like he's heading towards the top five maybe he's going to add some big time coach but this thing he needs to put to bed something like this in my opinion should never happen again let's talk about some sad news and i want to preface this with uh saying bg that we are not a gossipy podcast. We want to talk about tennis and that's all that matters. I think the only reason we, because we talked about it off air, whether we should talk about it. And the only reason we bring it up is it was obviously huge news in the tennis world. And for all the tennis fan that a couple that's been together for so long and have been married for so Long, have a daughter together, Alina Svitolina and Gael Monfils split up. The only reason we brings it up is because Guillaume Monfils has pulled out of the Paris tournament and so will not have that last goodbye and farewell with the Parisian people who always loved him, adored him, because of this really difficult private thing that he's going through right now. That's one thing. And the other thing, I just wanted to talk a little bit about how difficult it is to have a relationship as a tennis player, just in general, BG. I don't know how it was in your time, but in my time, If you're away from home for 40 weeks a year, away from your partner, from your friends, from your family, it's just very hard to keep a relationship alive. Well, how did you read those news? Well, obviously sad. It's sad for anybody, any young couple that has something like this happen. Obviously they have a daughter and that Gail was obviously probably so distraught. His last two tournaments were both in France, in Lyon and Paris. And he said, that's it. I'm pulling myself out of the drug protocol and I'm retiring. So hopefully he can, you know, on their own private terms, work this whole thing out. And I'll still say the same relationships are the same for everybody. You know, whether or not you're playing, you're not playing, they have all your challenges. When I was that age, I mean, when I was in my late twenties, I traveled every single week when i was married and with literally two kids on tour um you traveled with the whole family yeah yeah i mean we had one kid we had two kids when my son had to go to school when he was like five he was like what up i want to keep going you know because i was too so um and he liked he liked being oh he loved it he loved him he loved being on tour with you he loved it yeah so but then all of a sudden you go from 35 weeks a year on the road you go i got to go school and my wife was like so you know he only then got to go to the summers and stuff like that so it was it but for everybody and it's much easier now like i gotta be honest when when i first turned pro and some we had no computer you had no facetime you had know google it's like you literally had to have a collect you remember when you had an at t calling card and you had to type in your credit card it was like this was how you made contact so there is a lot easier to to communicate with people now but relationships and anything are not easy but i like what you said to start we don't gossip about relationships no we don' gossip we don gossip and honestly we don't know what really happened there's her post and that's all we know and we don but i just i thought it was a good um segue to talk about how difficult it's just from my own experience i don't want to talk about like my private life but you know it when you're gone for so long and you're a young person sometimes you would meet somebody you would start dating and then you're going for like eight weeks and when you 22 23 24 a whole life happens in eight weeks you know you come back but at least now you have from when you were 22 to what are you 38 years young now i'm 39 i'm the big 4-0 coming next year to pg remember no facetime and you have all these things that it's much easier yeah so well that's it's it much easier now but i remember when i started going on tour my parents always the one thing the one rule that i had to follow was to tell them that i arrived in wherever i was going and i remember i would call them from the hotel just yell the phone number of the hotel because if you kept under one minute it was only a euro or a dollar you know but if you went over calling from the hotel it was like 175 yeah the huge search yards no a hundred percent um so it they're always gonna be a challenge and then there's you know it's like a tennis match a lot of peaks and valleys the big team well and we are getting closer and closer to the atp and wta finals the wta finance will be held in indian wells this year for the first time and the atp finals will be held once again in turin and bg i wanted to tell you who is already qualified on the men's so should we start with the men maybe sure let's go there okay so we have zverev alcaraz shelton and kabali in the top four and then on five six seven and eight as of now we have medvedev tiafo fees and hodar still in the mixer alex de minor novak jokovic taylor fritz and tommy paul possibly what do you think who will make it in the end what's your do you have a guess well we know the last couple of years not only is sin city like not going to be there sinner he literally didn't lose a match and lose a set he dominated there and crazy caboli who's already in you know how many times he's lost first round in 26 how many nine times oh so yeah so i feel like between the last couple of tournaments you got a 250 this week you got a 500 a thousand i feel likes something like a folkina let's say he wins another tournament somebody else that's in 17th place happens to win the thousand i think that somebody else could still jump in the mix i remember about 11 12 years ago in bercy jack Sok was like in 26th place, and he won Bercy and got into eighth place. So I still feel like in the men's, even though we got four on that list who can get in there, I think if Djokovic obviously does well, he can get In there. I still think there's a lot of room for somebody else to like have a quick rally. And based upon the way these tournaments are going, expect some surprise winners well and that's the great thing about the race right that especially with the paris tournament in the very end with the women it all kind of um squares onto that asian swing with beijing and wuhan being such big tournaments but for the men with the parish tournament 1 000 points can really change so much especially if one of your direct rivals doesn't do as well and maybe loses a little bit early so definitely a lot to play for you know what you call it point watching time and another crazy stat zverev your guy from germany he's won two tournaments this year only but both majors that's pretty good i would take it if you told me you're just going to win two tournaments in all your life but they are majors i will sign it immediately And the women's is all set, right? No more navigating at the top. But probably the biggest surprise, what do you think? After finishing in the top two, four consecutive years, Sviantek doesn't make the year-end championships. She had a good chance to maybe backdoor in there, but her loss in the semis last week to Frilinska, and then she just pulled out today, ends her season, she will not make the year-end championships. Are you sure? Is that 100%? That's 100%, she's out. Oh, I thought she still has a chance, okay, because she pulled out, right? She pulled out today, and now we're kind of looking at maybe for the ninth and ten spots could be Kostik and Iva Jovic, but the top eight are set. Yeah, crazy. That's pretty. But actually, I wanted to say that's pretty crazy. But actually, as I mentioned before, for the women, the most points just lie on the line in that Asian swing, in that China, Beijing, Wuhan sort of constellation, because that's 2000 points that you can win in Beijing and Wuhan. And then there is many more tournaments surrounding that a couple of 500s where you can win a few more points so it's not surprising that the women's are set earlier and the 1 000 points in paris are going to be you remember last year uh andrew didn't rabakina make a huge rally at the end of the year and andreeva only had to win a couple of matches and she fell apart so we don't have any of that drama this year so it'll be interesting how the players come into iw basically everybody in and quite a few players will have a lot of time off it before playing that tournament yeah well i think actually mokhova and kostiuk still have it so mokhov and kostik might not be a hundred percent confirmed we will we will check that and get i'm calling it confirmation i did my quick little math you did okay i got muhova in so even if i guess so i guess i guess if caustic 1 500 1 500 but it seems very unlikely well i'm really i don't know what i was thinking trying to question your logic bg i'm very sorry i apologize but let me ask you one quick question who do you think of that we had such great young talent on the women's so this year who of those do you think will be possibly in the top eight next year okay i'll give you a few names i just circled a few of them eva jovich is obviously the highest rank of the young players where does she go from you know she's 11 in the world now um 18 almost 19 somebody i thought probably was going to make the year in championships this year if it wasn't for that she was injured was Mboko, somebody I know that you really like. Another player I feel like that's going to take a big leap in 27 is Barton Kova. The Czechia players always seem to have players and maybe the player that I'm most interested to see where she's going to go in 27, she probably has the most pressure on her of any player, is Ayala. Yeah, it's goingto be so interesting to see how she backs up this amazing season she's had this year. And actually, I don't know if you've seen it but she talked a little bit about that pressure and those expectations with maria sharapova on her podcast and you heard right here at the big t listeners we love other podcasts you can listen to more you can have multiple podcast favorite podcasts in the tennis world and maria has a great one it's called pretty tough if you haven't checked it out yet she talks to all kind of women successful women and what what pressure does to them how it makes them more resilient and she also talked to Alexie Ella. How do you find that joy and enjoyment in what you're doing? Recently, I've been almost looking forward to those moments where I'm out of breath or those moments where i'm really nervous and i've learned to, you know, enjoy facing them head on and, you know, i say to myself like you've been there so many times and you know how to handle it that when you're there like you you know how to do it thank you to maria sharapova and her podcast pretty tough for lending us some of that footage and what a brilliant young lady alexiala is bg right not only with her tennis but also with her personality we talked about her plenty this year already because of her great success on court but the way she masters everything off court is really really impressive don't you think yeah she handles herself beautifully from a country that's never had any players it's great to see and she's got fans to travel she does so we will never be amiss for a full stadium when alexiala plays in 2027 just as we had in 2026 and bg i have news for you i know you usually hit me with the big stats and the graphics and everything and the numbers but I have some news for you because the Hall of Fame nominees have just been announced and it is Ash Barty, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Juan Martin Del Pocho. That is a great ballot if you ask me. Yeah and Del Po is the what if with all the injuries. He's only got one but Ash Bartty of Those three is probably the only one that's for sure Deservant of But Kuzi, two slams One as only a teenager She had braces She had bracelets It's a tough one You could make a case for all three of them But I can definitely say Ash Barty will get in And I'm disappointed That he never gets on the ballot As a contributor I don't think coaches should be a contributor They should get in Dick Gould, the legendary coach of Stanford University, who they did honor at the U.S. Open. There was about 50 of his former players there. I feel like that he should be in 20 years ago, and he's still not on the ballot. So if the HOF is listening to me, Dick GOULD needs to be on the ballot. Forget about it. He needs to me in. So put him on there. I write him in every year on my vote. I just write him even though he's not even on the balot. Okay, BG, I will vote you in, you will vote Dick in and we will all be in the Hall of Fame, at least in the Petco Hall of fame, that's for sure. And thank you so much again for waiting for me. Go beat the LA traffic. I know I will put you in a little bit of a pickle. So I will let you go right now. And you should listen to your favorite podcast, The Big T, wherever you listen to other favorite podcasts and watch us on youtube.com. And you can also catch us on the Tennis Channel app. We are so excited that you are our loyal listeners and fans, and we can't wait to see you next week.