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Three Points

🎾 Upset City: If you were off enjoying your weekend and missed all of Cincinnati, let’s get you updated: All of the seeds have lost... (jkjkjkjkjkjk). But there was serious carnage in both the men’s and women’s draws over the weekend. Here’s a rundown of which seeds went down in the last two days:

  • Women: Diana Shnaider, Beatriz Haddad Maia, Liudmila Samsonova, Magdalena Frech, Leylah Fernandez, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Elina Svitolina, Sofia Kenin, Linda Noskova, Daria Kasatkina, Emma Navarro, Belinda Bencic
  • Men: Flavio Cobolli, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, Tomas Machac, Lorenzo Musetti, Casper Ruud, Denis Shapovalov, Tallon Griekspoor, Daniil Medvedev, Cameron Norrie, Alex de Minaur, Luciano Darderi
  • Remaining seed count: Going into the third round, the women have 20 of 32 seeds remaining, while the men have 20 of 32 left.

🎾 Out of the Blockx: Court Theory readers love a heads up on rising players. Consider this one: Belgium’s Alexander Blockx. Although I’ve mentioned him in passing before, this is a call for your full attention. The 20-year-old has mostly been playing on the ATP Challenger Tour, dipping his toe into the main tour sporadically over the last 18 months or so — and he’s showing exactly how much he belongs already. Blockx has got big game, all the shots, and a super-competitor’s spirit. With a bit more time for his body to fill out and experience against the world’s top players, there’s little doubt he’ll rise to the top.

  • In Cincy: Now, ranked 119 in the world, he took out Marcos Giron in the first round, and 27th seed Brandon Nakashima needed a third-set tiebreak to narrowly escape last night.
  • One to read: The ATP published a nice feature on Blockx’s backstory last year as he started winning on the ATP Challenger Tour.
  • Next: Blockx is next set to play in the qualifying of the U.S. Open.

🎾 You okay, bro?: Stefanos Tsitsipas, the social media poet laureate of tennis, was in his feelings at <checks timestamp> nearly 4:00 am on Monday morning, posting on X, “I’m not high maintenance, I just have taste.”

Given that he has his third-round match against world number 63 Benjamin Bonzi in a matter of hours, we take this as not a very good sign of the state of mind of Tsitsipas.

It’s not at all clear what Tsitsipas is referencing, but we have our guesses...

And, that’s game.

What They Said

We’re all working incredibly hard to make a living, to support ourselves and our families and to make a better life for ourselves...It requires more respect than just trying to categorize someone or put someone in a box as one or the other. I’m a tennis player. I’m a phenomenal tennis player. I’m No. 1 in the world, the first as a mother — ever in history. So if you want to call me a singles player, a doubles player, a mixed doubles player, whatever you want to say, it’ll be in the history books.

-Taylor Townsend on being called a doubles specialist.

On The Radar

Matches we’re monitoring today:

Cincinnati - WTA 1000 (Hard)

  • Jessica Bouzas Maneiro vs. Taylor Townsend (3rd round)
  • Aryna Sabalenka vs. Emma Raducanu (3rd round)
  • Anna Kalinskaya vs. Amanda Anisimova (3rd round)
  • Aoi Ito vs. Madison Keys (3rd round)

Cincinnati - ATP 1000 (Hard)

  • Taylor Fritz vs. Lorenzo Sonego (3rd round)
  • Jannik Sinner vs. Gabriel Diallo (3rd round)
  • Alex Michelsen vs. Holger Rune (3rd round)
  • Adrian Mannarino vs. Tommy Paul (3rd round)
  • Joao Fonseca vs. Terence Atmane (3rd round)
  • Felix Auger-Aliassime vs. Arthur Rinderknech (3rd round)

📺 Learn how to watch today’s action over at Tennis Watchers.

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