👋 Welcome back to The Daily Theory, our morning rundown to help you stay on top of your favorite sport. I’m Allen McDuffee, your guide to all things tennis.
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Today’s Vibe Check: 💥 + 😬 + 👏🏻 + 😓
Let’s tennis!
Three Points
🎾 A rough day at the office: You can invest hundreds of millions of dollars in revamping one of the most storied tennis facilities in the world, but sometimes things still just don’t go your way. That’s what happened in Cincy yesterday, in which glitchy streaming issues continued, advertising displays surrounding the courts kept flashing during play and had to be shut off, a local power outage halted play for more than an hour, and a fire alarm on center court left organizers wondering if everyone needed to be evacuated. It seems everyone was a little cranky from the heat — even the inanimate objects.
🎾 One helluva match: Emma Raducanu pushed Aryna Sabalenka in what may have been yesterday’s most entertaining match, but the world number one took the match in the end, 7-6, 4-6, 7-6.
- What she said: “She’s world number one for a reason and I pushed her more than I did at Wimbledon, so that’s an improvement,” Raducanu said after the match. “And also, it was good to have this result on a hard court because it’s very different to grass. I was always thinking that grass suits me a lot more and I still believe that so to have pushed her on a hard court like that, I’m pretty proud of it.”
- One wild number: Sabalenka logged 72 unforced errors in three sets and somehow still won.
- Intriguing: Raducanu’s new coach, Francis Roig, told her throughout the match that she was a better player than Sabalenka, noting in particular that if she won the second set, she would win the match. He was almost right.
- Next: Sabalenka faces Jessica Bouzas Maneiro on Wednesday.
🎾 The cruelty: Just one round after taking down Casper Ruud, Arthur Rinderknech had a collapse of his own. But this one was from the extreme heat in Cincinnati. After double-faulting to get broken in the second set against Felix Auger-Aliassime, the Frenchman went back toward the towel box and seemingly fainted. After receiving medical attention, Rinderknech (perhaps unwisely) attempted to continue play, but retired a few games later.
- What he said: “From my point of view, it was very sudden. We spoke later, and he told me he didn’t feel well today, right from the start, and it remained that way throughout the match. He tried to stay in the fight. For me, winning that first set was key,” Auger-Aliassime said later.
- And what he said: Rinderknech later posted on Instagram, joking that he tried the grill version of the GreenSet courts in Cincinnati and that he wasn’t a fan. He noted that he’s fine.
And, that’s game.
What They Said
We were like, ‘Okay, you guys (U.S. Open) just went rogue and changed the format and didn’t tell anybody. You just kind of did it. What do you even know? Did you talk to the players? Did you get their input about how it could be better?’ I think that’s just something that we as players are trying to work with them on, having that line of communication be a lot smoother. I feel like maybe if there was feedback about the format, then the (reaction) would be a little different, not so all over the place.
-Jessica Pegula on the 2025 U.S. Open mixed doubles format.
On The Radar
Matches we’re monitoring today:
Cincinnati - WTA 1000 (Hard)
- Iva Jovic vs. Barbora Krejcikova (3rd round)
- Jasmine Paolini vs. Ashlyn Krueger (3rd round)
- Coco Gauff vs. Dayana Yastremska (3rd round)
- Magda Linette vs. Jessica Pegula (3rd round)
- Varvara Gracheva vs. Karolina Muchova (3rd round)
- Ella Seidel vs. McCartney Kessler (3rd round)
Cincinnati - ATP 1000 (Hard)
- Karen Khachanov vs. Jenson Brooksby (3rd round)
- Brandon Nakashima vs. Alexander Zverev (3rd round)
- Alexei Popyrin vs. Andrey Rublev (3rd round)
- Jakub Mensik vs. Luca Nardi (3rd round)
📺 Learn how to watch today’s action over at Tennis Watchers.
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Read, Watch, Listen
- At Racquet, a look at how Caty McNally is building back just in time for a performance in her hometown.
- On Served, Andy Roddick sits down with Maria Sharapova for a loooooooong interview ahead of her induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
- In a moment of true goodness, tennis fans in Cincinnati thought they were recording messages to their favorite players only to get the surprise of their lives.
- Monica Seles is approaching her auto-immune diagnosis like she has every other challenge in life.
- Coco Gauff shows up in Cincy with her final New Balance x Miu Miu fit.
- And she deleted the X app from her phone.
- The more Darren Cahill talks about his working relationship with Jannik Sinner, the more we want to hear.
- Iga has gone full Wicked.
