👋 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.
Let’s tennis!
Three Points
🎾 El Peque calls it a career: Diego Schwartzman’s career came to an end on Thursday, losing to Spain’s Pedro Martinez. By almost every indication, he took in and enjoyed each moment. Even as it became obvious that the end had arrived, he listened to the crowd chanting his name — and, for a few moments, he wiped away the tears and found a way to smile. After it was over, an on-court ceremony gave Schwartzman an opportunity to speak at length a little about tennis, sure, but really about life.
- What he said: Later, he told ATPTour.com how he knew it was time to end his career: “I understood my body, I understood my head. I knew I had been exhausted for a while and that I couldn’t keep up what I had always managed to do... I achieved much more than I ever dreamed of.”
🎾 The whole thing: Sports Illustrated has published the entire set of gender recommendations Renee Richards made last year to the WTA for the inclusion of transgender athletes in tennis. There are passages that are thought-provoking, inspiring, disappointing, hypocritical, and bewildering.
🎾 Data point: The numbers are in, and the WTA is reporting an astonishing 1.1 billion global audience across broadcast and streaming platforms for 2024. That’s in no small part thanks to a deal with a carrier in China that brought live tennis to new regions in the country. But the WTA also reported significant upticks in several other markets, as well. In other words, here’s the proof that there’s not a product problem in women’s tennis. There never was. It’s always been a marketing and distribution problem.
