#158. 'Break Point'
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
The main event this week is Netflix's tennis docuseries Break Point, and it lands roughly: JVL is furious, Sonny is sympathetic-but-critical, and Mike (in his debut) splits the difference. JVL rails that the show is aimed at total tennis novices yet somehow still fails to explain the rules, never airs a single complete point, strips out the score graphic during rallies, and buries everything under intrusive club-EDM and reaction-shot editing that make it impossible to follow the actual tennis; Sonny counters that nobody watches tennis anymore, so the series functions less as sports documentary than as ATP/WTA marketing propaganda, a diagnosis Mike agrees with, adding that the show tells rather than shows, over-relies on manufactured voiceover hype, and keeps teasing Rafael Nadal (via 40 minutes with his uncle-coach Toni) instead of just making the doc about him. All three hosts, lifelong tennis fans and former high-school players, dig into Nick Kyrgios as a maddening talent, swap Sampras-vs-Agassi and Federer-vs-Roddick nostalgia (JVL recounts once writing a very complimentary Roddick comparison piece that Roddick himself retweeted), and debate whether tennis is a democratic or elite sport depending on region (Mike's Atlanta swim-tennis-club upbringing versus JVL's income-correlated New Jersey programs). The bulk of the front end, though, is devoted to formally welcoming Mike Warren as the show's new permanent third co-host — Sonny and JVL needle him as the "Ted McGinley" hire and credit him as the actual originator of the franchise back at The Weekly Standard's Substandard podcast — plus a long detour through Mike's newborn, Boy Scout/Cub Scout mulch-fundraiser and Pinewood Derby stories (with JVL declaring himself constitutionally anti-scout), and a heated Sonny-and-JVL breakdown of AMC's new per-seat surcharge pricing scheme, which they both agree is philosophically and mathematically dumb even though the underlying economic logic checks out.
From the show notes
Imagine a tennis documentary that was completely uninterested in the actual game of tennis as it is played on the court. Now imagine three guys talking about that. Everyone welcome Mike onboard as the new permanent cohost!
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00You step on that court, time stops.
Guest00:00:06Your heart starts beating faster.
JVL00:00:12The hardest thing in sports is expectation. We've been blessed with an era of greatness. Roger, Rafa, Serena, Novak.
Sonny00:00:26Who will take their place? Welcome back to the Sub-Beacon. I'm Sonny Bunch. And we are very pleased to be joined JVL and I by our new permanent guest. Is it permanent guest host? Is that a contradiction in terms of permanent? Permanent third wheel. Yes. We've got a new co-host. We've got a new co-host.
JVL00:00:55Our new co-host.
Sonny00:00:56Yes. A new permanent host. Michael Caine. We're not going to be cycling through everybody. There's no more of that. We got a guy. We got a guy. It's Vic Mattis. But no, I'm just kidding. It's Mike Warren. Mike Warren. Thank you for joining us all the time.
Mike00:01:14And you're stuck with me. You know, I'm the Ted McGinley of this show. I like that. You guys know who Ted McGinley is? I don't know what that means.
Sonny00:01:23Of course we know who Ted McGinley is.
JVL00:01:24I mean, I know who Ted McGinley is, but I don't know what that means. John C. McGinley of this show. Not the Ted McGinley. I know what you're trying to say about Ted McGinley.
Mike00:01:34Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, he's the guy.
JVL00:01:38They brought him in in Happy Days, right?
Mike00:01:39The patron saint of Jumping the Shark. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Married with children. Remember, he was married with children. And was he on the Love Boat? He was on everything. He was in Revenge of the Nerds. No. Yeah. He was on the Love Boat and he was on Dynasty. Yeah. So, look, I'm fitting right in. Is John McGinley related?
Sonny00:01:56Is he related to Ted McGinley? Is he like the son?
JVL00:01:58I believe there's no relation. They might be brothers. No. I believe no relation between the McGinleys. Okay. Yeah. I think you're right. I think you're right.
Sonny00:02:07Good-looking Irishman in Hollywood. No. What I was going to say before you froze on us in an amazing start to the new Mike Warren era, it's not an omen or a portent at all. What I was going to say is you're actually the reason this show exists. I think we've talked about this on the show before when you get the first report.
JVL00:02:24The show is his idea.
Sonny00:02:25But the show is literally-
JVL00:02:26Full property.
Sonny00:02:27Was literally Mike Warren's idea. Mike Warren was running the Weekly Standard website at the time, if I remember correctly, or I don't remember exactly- Digital editor. What the hierarchy of employment at the standard at the time was.
JVL00:02:44I don't remember.
Sonny00:02:45It's all up here. I don't have a ledger of wrongs and misdeeds like some people on the show, a mental list of everyone who is- Has fucked up and so on. But my understanding was you were brought in to, you got to spice things up. You were like, "We need podcast content. We need to get some superstars in here. We need to bring in the big guns." So of course you reached out to me immediately. Yes. You were like, "Sonny, we need you to come in and we're going to team you up with a couple of in-house guys. I'm going to pick them out of a hat. I don't know. And then we're going to start a show here. We'll call it the substandard." Yes. Because it's less than standard. It's inferior.
Mike00:03:30And if you remember, there were Bill Kristol intros where this was like this whole premise of this idea that this was like beneath this August magazine to be doing this, but he was allowing it anyway. So there was this, it was a whole theme kind of tying it all together.
Sonny00:03:47Yeah. I have a legacy of podcasts that I do, living long past when the... The place that they were born dies. So there's the weekly standard with the substandard, but also across the movie aisle is the only remnant of the entire reason I moved to Texas. So I know, but in all seriousness-
JVL00:04:08I thought you moved there just for the coyotes.
Sonny00:04:10Well, that's one of the many reasons. No, but in all seriousness, the show would not exist without Mike Warren. So it's very nice to have Mike Warren as our new permanent co-host. It's very exciting. Thank you for being on the show today, Mike.
Mike00:04:25Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for including me. I was hoping that I could, I've said this before to you guys, I wanted to have the executive producer credit, which meant not doing any of the actual work, but getting the money from it.
JVL00:04:43The Dino De Laurentiis of-
Mike00:04:45Exactly, exactly. Basically I learned, I was listening to a podcast once where they described every executive producer you see. On a show or whatever it was like, one of the star's agents and they got like that exec producer credit attached as part of the deal and they just show up, they don't do anything. That's what I was kind of hoping to do, it didn't work out. But I'm happy to be here, happy to talk about movies and TV shows and whatever else. How about Mulch?
JVL00:05:17It's- Mulch. Could you talk about Mulch?
Mike00:05:20We could talk Mulch. We could talk Mulch, not at this moment. We're sort of out of Mulching season.
Sonny00:05:26Did I mention this the other day JVL, I can't remember, the Boy Scouts were going around like door to door selling things.
JVL00:05:34Oh yeah, never buy the Boy Scout Mulch.
Sonny00:05:35In my neighborhood and they were like, we have, I was expecting popcorn because that's usually what they do I guess, it's like tins of popcorn. But instead it was, sir we're selling garbage bags and Mulch, I'm like, I don't need either of those things from a door to door child salesman. Nope. I need food stuffs.
Mike00:05:57That's where, that's where we got it. That's where we get our wrapping paper, um, is from, is from the Boy Scouts and they,
JVL00:06:02and they, and they spread it too. You patronize the Boy Scouts with their substandard Chinese imported Mulch.
Mike00:06:11So that's where you're wrong JVL. That's where you're wrong. It is good quality, high quality Mulch, uh, spread by, you know, the, the smaller hands of like the child labor can get into. Really the, the crevices and the nooks and crannies of our yard specifically request.
JVL00:06:30I would like the youngest possible Boy Scout troop so they can get their little fingers stuck in. And I want to sit up. They didn't look like Oliver twist with their little uniforms.
Sonny00:06:40They need to be able to get into the root structure.
JVL00:06:43Get really in, you know, when they're done, they haven't got their black kid boot for
Sonny00:06:47five quid governor.
Mike00:06:52That's exactly what, this is why I got my oldest into Cub Scouts is so that he won't eventually become a boy scout and we'll have to spread mulch and, um, and maybe learn some, you know, uh, things like hard work, character building, that sort of thing.
JVL00:07:07I was deeply anti scout as a, as a young lad.
Sonny00:07:12I'm shocked.
JVL00:07:13And I buy this, that's I remember being asked if I would consider joining some friends scouting troop. And I, I think I was like. Seven. And I, I said, it's basically you are the Hitler youth with your, the propaganda and your brown shirt uniforms.
Sonny00:07:38Like you're some bizarre paramilitary organization learning how to your handbook and you're like,
JVL00:07:44I'm thrifty and wise and yeah, fuck that noise. I'm not gonna join some organization to put on a uniform, be ordered around and told what to do by some adult. No. Thank you. George Hoffman.
Mike00:07:58You, I think you are highly, uh, overestimating the ability of the kids who join scouts to do anything that would threaten, I just don't like, I don't know, threaten the library, the local library, let alone the, the, the, the nation.
JVL00:08:14Yeah. No, I just, I don't, I, I, even as a young lad, I did not like the, even the, even the authority type figures attached to scouting, I just said, no, thank you. Yeah. In my own way. Sonny. You know what? I'm a cop who plays by his own rules. I'm a loose cannon. Sonny were you a scout?
Sonny00:08:32You were the Vic Mackey of Cub Scouts. You should have joined the Cub Scouts and then subverted them from the inside. You should have been like a mole who was, uh, trying to bring down the organization.
JVL00:08:43Graffiti, graffiti in the troop clubhouse.
Sonny00:08:46No, I never did scouts as scouts was not a thing I did, uh, not out of any sort of ideological objection, just never, never really came up with my, my friend. Group. I was, I was busy playing sports like tennis. Well, that would be a good transition if we were like 10 minutes further into the segment. But Mike, were you a scout?
Mike00:09:04You must have been a scout. Mike Warren, the natural. Oh, I was, I was a Cub Scout and I was a boy scout for a couple of years, but yeah, I was a Cub Scout. Um, and was into it all the camping and, um, the knot tying, uh, the Pinewood Derby, the outdoor activities, Pinewood Derby, which, which we just did the Pinewood Derby. Uh, uh, weekend before shout out to you, Justin, for, for Henry's, uh, Henry's, uh, Cub Scout pack. Um, yeah. Did the Pinewood Derby did all that stuff, the jamborees, the summer camp, um, mostly the outdoor stuff is what I was into and, and, and in fact, so my best friend and I went all the way through a couple of years into the boy scouts, uh, again, very much into, we hiked, uh, the Georgia leg of the Appalachian trail one summer, uh, you know, all the AT baby, uh, in fact, including the approach trail to the AT to the AT.
Sonny00:10:04You were, you were in the ATAT, you were an ATAT Walker. ATST.
Mike00:10:10Yes, exactly. I was an ATAT Walker, uh, and, um, I crack me up that's epic. It's epic, epic dad, Star Wars joke. Um, the, but, but then all the older kids, the older guys that we looked up to that would do. All of that stuff when they left, when they graduated, like we didn't, we didn't see any other reason then all the other younger kids coming up, they, they weren't interested in any of that stuff. So we said goodbye. We had other. They just wanted to sit around huffing girls.
Sonny00:10:42Did you burn down the clubhouse on your way out where you were like, if I can't do this, nobody can just torture it.
Mike00:10:48No, we just, it was just, it was just neglect. It was just like, you know what? See you later. But I loved, I love the scout. So I'm trying to get my boys. Into it. I have thoughts about this current Cub scout pack that we're in. There's a little JVL would love it because there's zero discipline in this Cub scout pack. And I'm kind of thinking maybe it's time for me to take a step up. The pack leader is leaving and I'm thinking maybe I'll step up. I'll take over. There'll be a putch. If you will. Yes. A putch in the Holy Spirit Catholic school basement.
JVL00:11:25Yeah. Well, wait, hold on now. Is this legit Cub scouts or is this Catholic Cub scouts? No, it's not the, what's the Catholic version?
Mike00:11:35Oh, I don't even know what the Catholic version is.
JVL00:11:37Cause I've never Catholics have their own, you know, like the, the girl scouts and American heritage girls and the boy scouts are the, they do have, you're right. You're right.
Mike00:11:47I don't know. This is a something like that, right? Exactly. The, uh, but this is a all boys, uh, pack. Uh, we are not a part of the, um, mixed gender, uh, pack at the elementary school. Oh, they have a mixed gender pack. So that's how they do it decline right there in their family. Um, but we're part of the smaller, it's all boys and, um, they could use a little discipline. The, the, the Pinewood Derby was, um, insane and out of control. So what are you going to do?
JVL00:12:24Just like kids running around. Corporal punishments or when kids misbehave, they get tied down naked to an ant hill for an hour. Let the fire ants like make our, their body.
Mike00:12:35I, I, I am crowdsourcing ideas. So keep them coming. I mean, this is, this is a good start. Um, but we'll see.
Sonny00:12:43I don't know. I got too much. Look, you throw one kid in the mulcher, that's, that's you never have to do it again, solved right there. You will never have to do it again.
Mike00:12:53The boy Scouts get their mulch kids. This is where it comes from, from Cubs, that don't, that don't, that are quiet when you
JVL00:12:59hold up the two fingers anyway, what else going on? How are you? You have a baby. Yeah, that's true.
Mike00:13:08I was saying nothing's going on with me, but that's not true. Yeah. We have a baby. He's almost a month old. Uh, as we record this and, um, holding up. Okay. Yeah. Holding up. Great. You know, it's funny. I was just talking to the, uh, we had the baby out in the cul-de-sac today. Um, seeing the neighbors and I was thinking, you know, so the distance between my kids is, uh, three and a half years between the first two and then five years, almost nearly five years between number two and number three and something about it being number three, the muscle memory is actually better after almost five years than it was after three and a half years. I don't know why that is. It could be that. I don't care as much, you know? I mean, it's like all of the anxiety about like, oh my gosh, the is the baby's crying. You've got to stop the baby from crying right now. He just fell on the floor.
JVL00:14:08Do we have to sanitize it before we give it back to the kid?
Mike00:14:12Hell no. Do you remember sanitizing those binkies in that first month? I don't know. I didn't. We didn't even do that. We were that. We were that lazy that we didn't even do that with the first, but like all of the other, you know, the freak out about, oh, is it. It's like, you know, the baby is not falling asleep immediately. Like what's wrong, you know, like, oh, no, no, no. You just try the next day. There's something more intuitive about it now, even though you're so burned out on raising
JVL00:14:37kids that you can barely even get it up to care anymore. That's true.
Mike00:14:40That's true. That's a good point. I do think that I do. Yeah. No, it's, it's the older kids who are the problem. Uh, not the, not the baby baby's growing.
Sonny00:14:47Yeah. I mean, the more, the more kids you have, the less you care about each successive kid and like, it's, that's just the way it works. I like. Science. One reason, one reason why I couldn't possibly fathom having another one at this point. I was like, if I don't care, if I like care even less than I do with the second, it's gonna be a real problem for number three. He's gonna be in that. He's gonna be in the bad boy scout troop, you know, just causing, causing chaos.
Mike00:15:13I love my kids. I just need to, I feel like I need to say that. Oh yeah, of course. I love them.
Sonny00:15:17Don't we all? I love them. That's assumed. Everyone, everyone listening to the show understands that love of children, love of our own children is assumed. You know, it's a stipulation that's a given always there under the surface, it's the thing below the text.
JVL00:15:33It's the subtext of all these conversations, St. Tina, what you been up to buddy?
Sonny00:15:41Um, not a whole lot.
JVL00:15:44Uh, my neck doesn't feel like that little video, Tik TOK video you sent us or no.
Sonny00:15:51Well, I mean, we could talk about that. If we could talk about that, we could talk about. Did you guys see the AMC pricing plan? We could talk about that, which I totally wanted to talk about that.
Mike00:16:01I would love to.
Sonny00:16:02So I, uh, well, it was funny. So I, I sent you guys a, just a, it's a, it's a, uh, an all a Tik TOK, Tik TOK of an awful, awful human creature who, uh, is, is, you know, saying, well, if you want to, if you want to watch your movie in silence, you should stay at home. If I'm at the theater, I'm going to talk in the movies and it went on like that for a while. Um, uh, I mean that person obviously should die in a, in a fire preferably. Um, uh, but you know, uh, the, the, the big question is, you know, how, how much does a person like that affect the overall experience? Obviously it's a lot. I would say that like the number one strike, the best case against theaters is other theater goers, which is one reason why the draft house is so nice because they're, they are the, they are the boy Scouts of, uh, Uh, theater owners. They're real Nazis. Um, so when, when they, when they, uh, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just messing with you, Mike. It's okay. Um, this is, this is an outrage on my show, on my show. Um, but, uh, but no, I mean they, so, so the second, the second case, the second best case against, uh, uh, theaters is how expensive it is. And, uh, AMC has come up with a new way to nickel and dime people, which is to charge them, um, charge more money for the best seats in the middle of. Of the auditorium and the middle seats, uh, in the middle rows, you know, the basic, basically the best seats where the image and the sound are all the best, um, and charge less for the front row of seats. If you want to sit in the front row and you pay $2 less, if you want to sit in the good middle seats, it's $1 more. Now this is the sort of thing I'm going to preface everything I'm about to say here by saying this makes absolute 100% intellectual sense, right? The theory, the thinking here is okay. You pay more money. For front row seats at a concert, you pay more money for box seats at the opera. You want to, if you want the best seats in the house, you pay a little more money because that's where demand is highest. The problem with this theory is that is like fourfold. The first problem is that this only really works, uh, um, if you can, uh, if you can, if you can actually stop people from sitting in the more expensive seats and they're not, it's not like they're going to be sending in ushers to check every time, right? That's just, that's just not going to happen. It's not like AMC is not like the draft house. They're not going to, they don't have waiters, um, so it's not going to work too. And this is the real big problem here is that it creates this like ever present, um, reminder of inequality, which is what people actually hate about inequality, right? Income inequality is actually not a problem in this country at all. It is not. I, I, you will never convince me that people actually care about income inequality and it doesn't, it, it just, it's not. It's not an issue. But when you remind people all the time by when they go to a movie screen and they're like, oh wait, I have to pay a dollar more. Fuck that. I'm not going to do that. Um, it's, it's just like a, it's like an, it's like an extra little nudge to get them not to want to go to that screen in the first place. Third problem here is if you do the math. So the only time that those seats are ever going to be full is if it's a sellout, right? If you do the math, the, uh, AMC actually loses like $2 a screen if all the seats sellout and all the seats. All of the $1 up charges are taken and all of the $2 under charges are taken. They actually lose money. They lose money. And so I am actually, I'm 100% in favor of variable, variable, variable pricing, um, for movie theaters. But this is the dumbest possible way to do it. The smart way to do it is what they did with the Batman, which is that you just charge a dollar more a seat for every showing of the Batman for the first two weeks or ant man quantum mania or whatever, because you know what sells out? No matter what. Superhero movies, big blockbuster type pictures, they sell out opening weekend, lots of screens. They're all selling out. People are very price. Uh, is it in a, is it elastic price elastic? What am I?
Mike00:20:11What am I looking for?
Sonny00:20:12Price elastic price? Elasticity is very high on, on this sort of thing. And the flip side of this coin is that you, uh, you do the same thing with, uh, like the, uh, on the, on the other end. Of things, right? 80 for Brady charged matinee prices for all of the showings of 80 for Brady at a bunch of theaters. I don't know if it was all of them, but it was a bunch of them. Um, and that made a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense because what do you have? You have older audiences coming out. The difference between a matinee ticket and a senior ticket. Isn't that big anyway? Um, if you can convince an extra 20% of folks to show up who wouldn't have necessarily showed up anyway by charging less, it makes sense. Having Tuesday night tickets be $7 at the draft house. Makes sense. It gets people to show up Tuesday night is actually like kind of crowded at my draft house. Now people have internalized that like, oh, I can basically get half price tickets on Tuesday night. I will go on Tuesday night at 7:00 PM. Um, so like it is a, it's a, it's that sort of thing is good, but this, like, I'm gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna nickel and dime you at the per seat level is just going to piss people off. Human beings, not rational creatures. They're not, they're not gonna like it.
JVL00:21:17There are two other problems with this sunny. It would be one thing to be doing this in 1995. Uh, the box office was surging and people are showing up to see movies all the time. This is the nuclear winter of the theatrical experience. The problem is that there aren't people, there isn't a surging demand for these things. The number of movies, which per year, which will sell out an auditorium, you know, even on the first, first weekend is probably like, it's probably 10 of them a year. Right. That can do that. That everything. I go to the movies. It's a lot more than the average American. And I would say in 70% of the movies that I have seen recently, the theater has been less than a quarter full, which means that you're gonna, you're gonna tell people that even though every single person here could just sit, you know, like in the middle and still have two empty seats between them and the next person that they have to all sit out on the sides, unless they want to pay an extra dollar, that, that does not make any sense. Can I, uh, can I.
Sonny00:22:24Can I interject here? Just one thing, because what you said reminded me of another thought that I had when I was thinking about this, which is that like, if they had introduced this, when they initially introduced the, uh, assigned seating, you know, we've got the assigned, you can pick your own seat, um, stadium seating style seats, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, when these became standard, if they had initiated it, then I think people might've accepted it. I think people might've accepted it, um, but you can't, you can't, you can't have this thing. People hate having charges added on to things that they get for free. Essentially.
JVL00:23:02Well, this is, this is the second problem. This is the paywall. This is the paywall. No, no. It's it's worse though. Content. Because for the last 40 years, AMC has started every single movie with Nicole Kidman walking in and talking about how in this theater, every seat is perfect and that, you know, whatever movies are magic because the sound is great and there are no bad seats. We've got these big recliner and now all of a sudden AMC is gonna say, oh, actually only these seats are good. The other ones all sort of suck. How does that work? Yeah. Right. This is, and again, also, I don't know, like just as a, you cannot charge people for seats that will otherwise be empty. Right. I mean, this is the, you, you cannot say you know, pay us more to sit in this seat or the seat will go empty. Right. You, you can say in screenings where we anticipate because of tracking, et cetera, et cetera, that more than 80% of tickets will be sold there. We're gonna have variable pricing. You could do that. I guess that might fly, but for the, the, the most of screenings and most showings in America where theaters are now like 10% full. 15% full because there are no movies out and because people don't fucking go to the movies anymore. Now they're gonna say, oh, and when you show up to your, to your, your auditorium and there are 10 other people in it, if you sit in the middle, we want you to give us an extra dollar. Yeah.
Sonny00:24:40That's not going to work. It's insane. It's it's insane. It's it really is just totally bonkers.
Mike00:24:45Um, it's well, it, it, it, as you said, it, it feels so late. Uh, I, I do agree with you, Sonny, that had they tried to implement this with the assigned seating, there's a bit of, uh, congruence there in, in terms of, okay, I'm getting this assigned seat. I'm paying for a seat. Um, you all make, I think the practical points about why this is insane. I just, I thought about it from a philosophical, uh, perspective that, okay. This is very Pollyannaish. This is very much like, you know, pining for a time that never existed. But I mean the, the idea of movie theaters as this kind of democratic place where, you know, you think about back in the thirties when people would go to movie theaters for, for, for the air conditioning, um, and, and they didn't care what they were watching. There's something so, uh, just kind of antithetical to my romantic idea of a movie theater doing this kind of nickel and diming that just, it just, it gets me at like a beyond the intellectual level. It just seems so antithetical to the idea. No, I think this is totally right.
Sonny00:25:52I think, I think this is totally right. The, the movie theater is the most populist, uh, entertainment in America. Like it is, it is the, it is the most equalized place in the country. It's the, it's rich or poor, you know, whatever people come and they, they watch a movie. It's still the cheapest night out that you can, it's like the cheapest date night out. It's cheaper than going to a restaurant. It's cheaper than going to a concert or a sporting event. Um, it is, it is, uh, it is again, the, the, an extremely populist American form of entertainment. And again, I like, I really think that the issue here is I get rubbing people's face in it. It it's like the whole lightning lane fiasco at, uh, at Disney, right? I don't, I like the, the, the thing that people, the thing that park regulars most objected to, there were, there was a lot of stuff that they didn't like under Bob Chapek, a lot of stuff that had been introduced, uh, in the preceding years. But the thing that I kept hearing over and over again from regulars was, and they kept charging us more for individual rides. Uh, if we wanted to skip the line with the lightning lanes and that drove people crazy, that drove people absolutely bonkers, um, because they were just getting their faces rubbed in it. This like extra $50 charge for a ride. It was too much.
JVL00:27:12What if Netflix started charging people an upcharge, depending on how large their home television screen was, because if you're have a bigger screen, you're getting more pixels. No. And so maybe you ought to be paying a dollar or more a month than somebody's just watching it on their phone.
Sonny00:27:29They already, but they already do that. There's the, to get 4k, to get the 4k charge, there's there, you have to be subscribed to the premium $20 a month tier.
JVL00:27:39Um, which is somebody on a 70 inch screen should be paying more than somebody on a 45 inch screen because they're just getting a lot more resolution and pixels out of it.
Sonny00:27:47Extra data they're getting.
Mike00:27:48But that is a, that is a personal, you're talking about your personal account. There's I, I, I feel less. Yes. Outraged about that. It's again, it comes back to this idea of the movie theater as you know, it's like, like Nicole Kim, it says it's like this magical place you sit down and everybody's there and
JVL00:28:05you. Every seat is great. Oh, every, no, some of the, some of the seats are terrible, but you know what feels good
Mike00:28:11to cry. Show up, show. Yeah, exactly. Right. Show up early. That's what I say. Show up early.
Sonny00:28:18If you don't want to sit with your neck like that. All right. Speaking of Netflix in 4k, we talked about. Breakpoint this week, which is a new tennis documentary from the guys who do the racing show. Um, that we all refuse to watch, sorry KSA, um, uh, but, uh, it's, uh, it's tennis. It's tennis. It's tennis documentary. We're following the young, the young and upcoming stars and also Nick Kyrgios, um, uh, as they try to, you know, uh, ascend to the top of the ranks in the 2022, uh, tennis season. Very exciting. Uh, JBL, do you want to give us a big boy review?
JVL00:28:58Breakpoint is brought to you by the makers of Gran Turismo. Is that what that thing is called? I don't know what, whatever it is that people, the people like, and, uh, it is a documentary series about tennis intended for people who know absolutely nothing about tennis, never watched a lick of tennis before so much so that it goes and explains. How tennis works scoring wise, but doesn't explain any of the rules, which doesn't make any sense to me. Right. So they give, they, they, they, they do an actual tutorial over and then we get six games and six to a set and then three sets, which is, but don't explain to, I mean, if you are so dumb that you don't know how set scoring works in, in tennis dumb is the wrong word. If you are, are so ignorant enough, so ignorant of it, then you probably should be explained like second serves work. And when they show doubles, why are they using the doubles lanes? All of a sudden it, the entire thing, it made me angry. It made me really angry because it made tennis, which I believe is one of the most interesting sports that we have a sport, which reveals character in ways that nothing short of boxing or gladiatorial. Gladiator gladiator combat does, uh, and is really the mod. I think tennis is the modern day gladiator games, uh, and it reduced it to the scale of reality series. And I, I resented that. Uh, and what I wanted was a, a good documentary about tennis made for people who actually like tennis.
Sonny00:30:50Well, no, you, well, you came into this wrong then, because the problem is nobody, nobody likes tennis anymore. Nobody. Tennis is a, is basically a dying sport. This is as, as Mike said over tax, right? Like this is like the WTA and the ATP saying somebody please care about us again. Right. Pretty much.
JVL00:31:08I guess this is like the WTA version of HBO's hard knocks, right? Yes. Where they, they, they're like, here's somebody, I will actually wonder if they're paying Netflix.
Mike00:31:17It feels like propaganda. I mean, it's, it's, it's, that's, it has that feeling of it and, and, and not in a way. Like the last dance was propaganda for Michael Jordan. Uh, because at least the, the, the, at least it was well done, um, uh, the last dance, but go back to something you said JVL about w they didn't explain how tennis works. Why would that matter? They didn't show any actual tennis happening.
Sonny00:31:43Well, so this is, this is never shown in a complete, a single complete, or even explain
JVL00:31:48what was going on.
Sonny00:31:49This is, this is, this is what drove me the craziest about the show. Uh, just watching. Watching it as somebody who, somebody who has played tennis and somebody who has watched a fair amount of tennis, even if not as much in recent years as I might've liked, um, uh, as somebody, as somebody who has like spent a lot of time around the sport, it was intensely frustrating to watch the actual game play because it was frequently shot in these really tight closeups that did not let you see anything that was happening on the court. But then on top of that, when you did see an actual point play out, it was, it was, it was. Yeah. It was frequently impossible to tell who was serving. If there were on break, if they, if they were, I had you, there's no sense to excise the
JVL00:32:30score graphic. Right. So when, when they're showing, and again, only snippets of a point, they never show a complete point from service to finish. And when they show the snippets of it, they have taken away the graphic, which shows. And instead what they do is so you have no context, right? You have absolutely no context for what you're seeing. And so instead you just get the, you know, they show a bunch of random shots, interspersed with snippet, like forward snippets of commentary. Like she's gonna have to win more points to win this one.
Mike00:33:01You know, like the type of commentary, which sounds like it's from dodgeball, plus it sounds like it's pepper and cotton plus music and music tells you that it's really important. What's happening right now.
JVL00:33:11Right. Is that, is that EDM? What is, what is that pulsing club music? But it made me angry listening to it constantly. And I, I don't know. I just like tennis. This is so interesting.
Sonny00:33:25You were really excited to watch this. You had been trying to get me to watch this for like a month now. Yeah. JBL. That's right. You, you were like, we gotta watch. We gotta watch the tennis documentary.
JVL00:33:34We were gonna love it. Cuz we love tennis. I thought it would make for a good show. Like, cuz you know, we got three guys who know tennis here and uh, all three of us played high school tennis. Right. And uh, I, who I need a minute brief. I'm sorry. I will say. I'm so I'm, I'm broken here.
Sonny00:33:53All right. So, so we, we've, we've, uh, JBL is demonstrating a very key point. The one key point of the series, the thing, the series does actually get right, which is that tennis is above is not above all else, but is at this level where everybody is of essentially the same physical caliber of play. It is a mental game. It is a, it is a mental game. You have to have a mental toughness to succeed in tennis. And this is why all tennis players are essentially insane people. It's why you, whenever you see a, whenever you see tennis players, uh, you know, start to have trouble and start yelling at themselves, they look like crazy people on the streets because they are crazy people. Um, but they've just managed to channel that insanity into the correct avenues. And this, this, this, I think this, uh, I think this series does a very good job of getting into that mindset and showing how the, how quickly the breakdowns happen. How, how. Within the course of like three points in a match, you can go from being like, I'm going, I'm just cruising along here. I'm doing fine to like, I'm the worst player on earth. What is wrong with you? What the fuck is wrong with you out there? What are you doing? What are you doing to yourself? Why do you suck so much? And it is like, that is, that is, uh, that is, that is a, I think that is a thing that, I mean, I don't want to speak for you guys. Certainly a thing that has happened to me, uh, on the tennis court. Um, and it is a thing that happens to all these guys. Now, some of them channel it in different ways. Nick Kyrgios channels it by yelling at the umpire, yelling at, uh, at other people. Right. And this is why he's one of the bad people in the sport. He's he's like one of the, I find him to be an intensely unpleasant person to watch play in bits and pieces or in full because I've, uh, I, and you get the same, you get the same vibe from all of the tennis people who talk about him on the show. All of them are like vaguely in awe of his physical talent and they all think he is, he's, he's a jackass who doesn't, who doesn't belong on the tour basically.
JVL00:36:01So I, I had a, I, I laughed about this there. They periodically allow Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova to speak for four seconds at a time. Why they do this. I'm, I'm not clear. Uh, you know, if you're gonna, if you have Andy Roddick and Ray Sharapova, both of who are actually pretty insightful reality is very, very smart, uh, like let them talk. Right. Let, let them anyway. And he said, he says something about how curious what he doesn't like about curious is not the outburst. It's the fact that curious treats tennis like a hobby that he plays for like, you know, four months out of the year or something like that. And, uh, I was laughing at this because I don't know if you remember this Mike, but back at the standard, I wrote a piece about curious in which I, uh, I explicitly compared him to Andy Roddick. Curious had a lot more, just much more talent than, than Roddick had, uh, Roddick only ever won a single grand slam. The truth is he was lucky to get that one and it's because of the accident of the timing of his birth. He was born, you know, right to put him. He was reaching his peak as a tennis player, basically beginning four weeks before Roger Federer became Roger Federer. Right. When, when Federer flipped the switch and became the greatest player, the world has ever seen.
Mike00:37:23He caught Sampras Agassi.
JVL00:37:24He caught Federer.
Sonny00:37:25Well, he got, he caught, he caught Agassi second wind and Federer's first wind. And it was like, well, that sucks. That sucks for him.
JVL00:37:32Yeah. And, uh, anyway, so I, I wrote this piece and, and what was, what I found so heroic about Roddick is that Roddick could have, I mean, he was going to be the best American player of a generation. He looks like a movie star. He could have made, just sat back and like been a top 10 player and date a bunch of supermodels and make endorsement dollars and not really tax himself that much. But instead he like drove himself insane and he remade his body and his game three different times all in this mad scientist quest to beat Federer and it never worked and the guy never fucking stopped trying. And I really, anyway, Andy Roddick tweeted the piece out and, uh, I was like, man, this is a humbling take. And, uh, and I sat there thinking to myself as I was watching him talking about Kyrgios and he in fact says on the documentary, you know, I wish I had that guy's talent, physical talents. I was like, that's right. Andy read that from me. Yes.
Sonny00:38:26I mean, I, I will say, I will say that Roddick Roddick's career is also the, the, the, the point that kind of broke me as an American tennis fan. I, the last one of the last matches I remember watching is his epic against Federer. The like, I, you know, the game, the one that went to like 15, 13 in the fifth set or whatever
JVL00:38:46final.
Sonny00:38:47Yeah. The Wimbledon, the Wimbledon final.
JVL00:38:49And I like where, uh, where that's the one where, where, uh, Federer broke, uh, Sampras's
Sonny00:38:53team. Yeah. And I just like, I, I, I, I wanted him to win that so badly and like he wanted to win it so badly. He played his fucking heart out and like, just couldn't do it because Federer is Federer. And like that, that was like the end, that was like kind of the beginning of the end for me, uh, in terms of my like regular tennis watching, which is unfortunate. Uh, I'm hoping.
JVL00:39:18Well, tennis will break your heart that way. Right. I mean, you know, I mean, two of the closest matches I've ever watched were straight set losses. Uh, one was, uh, Federer beating Rodic in a nighttime match at the U S open and he beat him like six, four, six, four, six, four straight sets, which is like, you know, one break each. Right. Uh, and yet it was the highest level tennis you could possibly imagine. And one of those things where five shots go differently and Rodic would have worn, I mean, just, it was amazing. And the other was the Sampras demolishment of Agassi. At the U S open where he beat him like seven, six, seven, six, seven, six. Do you guys remember this? Oh yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and that's how tennis will break your heart. Right. As good as like an Agassi or Rodic can be when you go up against just a guy who is just the baddest cat in the jungle, the way Sampras was at that period, the way, the way Federer was, then it doesn't matter what you do. That's right. Like you just, you can't beat them.
Mike00:40:17Right. Yeah. Well, look to, to go back to the doc, a couple of thoughts about. What doesn't work, what, what, what, what it sort of doesn't get right about either tennis or even just as a sports documentary. So the first thought I had was, you know, Nadal is sort of lurking in the background throughout the entire thing. Right. And the whole time I'm watching. He's always just there. He's always there. And the whole time I kept going, can we see the Nadal documentary? Like what, why do I care about, I mean, no offense, but, uh, what was her name? Uh. Uh, Novich. Um, the girlfriend of, uh, of, uh, uncle Tony, he spent like 40 minutes or uncle Tony or any of these, like, I don't, I don't care about these people. Like show me the guy who is what, 37, 38 years old and still like fucking destroying, uh, like that's, that's who I wanted to watch it. So again, to bring up, uh, uh, last dance again. I, I just had this feeling of like, well, I just want to watch, uh, a sports documentary about greatness, not about these people. And maybe that's unfair about, you know, uh, there for me, uh, to see, you know, you want to see these up and comers, but they're just not that interesting. And, and, and, and it ended up being, uh, a bit of a letdown when almost all of them invariably lost at some point. And it wasn't a, one of these kind of heartbreaking losses that tells you something about their character. Sometimes they just kind of hit a brick wall and then it was over, um, particularly the last, the last match. Um, with poor, uh, Casper rude and, and, and, and all just, you know, smoked him. I did like, I didn't think the documentary did a good job of, um, when, when they, when they did not tell and they did show, uh, which was rare that they did this, but the few times they did it, it was great because the, because the material was there and, and, and there were a couple of moments in the run-up with Casper rude, you know, where he's, you know, he's talking, there's the one where he's putting on. The, uh, the headband and it's this, it's this almost, I mean, it is an insane sort of, uh, uh, you know, uh, OCD thing he's doing, trying to get it on exactly right samurai. And then when he's in the room, the little room with Nadal as they're getting ready to go on and, and you compare it with, um, with the, uh, with the, with the, the Canadian guy, Felix, that, uh, that play, um, and you know, Felix is. Also sort of, uh, uh, uh, intimidated by Nadal, but he kind of plays it cool. He kind of does his own thing, uh, poor Casper route. It's just, he just looks like a little boy next to this man. And so all of those things, they didn't say anything. The problem was, is they kept telling this documentary, kept telling you things, telling you how to feel, telling you what to think. I mean, is it just me or what were those like voiceovers at the beginning of every episode where they had some, you know, like. Random Australian woman, uh, supposedly from like a TV broadcast saying, you know, and, and here we've got, you know, uh, the, uh, uh, a matchup between the, the, the two biggest, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Those were made up for the documentary. Right. I mean, that has to be right. I had the same thought.
JVL00:43:41It sounded so fake.
Sonny00:43:42I mean, yeah, but I, I, all right. So I, I I'll, I will stick up for the documentary in the sense that, you know, I'm sure they did just didn't have access to Raphael Nadal. There's no, there's no, there's no way. Why would Rafa sit down with him? I mean, like that's, that's not gonna happen. That's why you get 50 minutes with Tony Nadal, right? Is because you got, you got one Nadal who's like, obviously a hog for attention and you
JVL00:44:07know, is like desperate to be in front of the camera being Felix and you hire this guy to help take you to the next level fired him that day. Only the only thing he does is say, well, you know, Rafa would do this, or when I was with, when I was with Rafa, Rafa said that I would want to fucking murder him.
Sonny00:44:28I, I don't understand.
JVL00:44:29I'd be like, I am the ninth best player on the planet. And all you'll do is talk about Rafa this and Rafa that.
Sonny00:44:36I would, it would drive, I would've, I would've fired, I would've fired him when he said he wanted Rafa to win. I like, I, I don't see how can he be your coach? How can he be? How can he be your coach? I don't, I don't understand. But you know, whatever, like, so that's, that's just the documentary and like the setting of the stage stuff didn't bother me that much either. And I will say that I actually like the idea of Nadal as a specter in the background. Yes. I do too. I like it. I think that actually works for the structure of the documentary because you've got, you've got all these guys who are on the rise who are trying to supplant, you know, this, this generation of superstars, um, that is, that is, you know, hopefully exiting the stage. I don't know what they're gonna do with this show for 2023 with Djokovic coming back and immediately winning the first slam he enters. Like I, like it's, you know. Uh, we'll see.
JVL00:45:24So do you get the sense, like have people watched it? Is it, is it a thing on Netflix? I don't know. Is it charting?
Mike00:45:33I couldn't even find it on Netflix. I had to search for it. I, I, you know, I was sort of scrolling through, okay. You know, top, top 10, you know, those sort of things nowhere to be found.
JVL00:45:43Yeah. Well, this is the problem, right? I mean, tennis tennis is popularity is largely dependent, uh, on having. Um, all time greats. And it's, it's best when the all time great is American. Yes. Right. I mean, when, when, when there are good American players, that's why Serena Williams is, uh, retirement is like nuclear winter for she's been carrying American tennis all by herself for like a decade at this point. Yeah. Uh, and it's a real problem, but I see, I really love, so I don't need greatness in a documentary on this. I mean, I, I'm happy. I would be happy. I mean, to have a documentary just about Federer or Nadal, um, you couldn't pay me to watch a documentary, but I would watch Federer at all. But for me, the, the cruelty of tennis is, is twofold. The first is that as, as Taylor Fritz says in one of the episodes, uh, you know, in this sport, every single one of us loses every week except for one guy, right? I mean, this is, it's just loss after loss after loss, but the second part of it is that you can be the 30th best player on the planet. And that means that you're basically barely scraping by, right? I mean, you, you are not recognized anywhere you go. Uh, you are always worried about finishing in the money. And if you are the hundredth best player on the planet, then you have to worry about having enough money to get to the next tournament. The next week, cuz that's the, the tour is, you know, you're constantly. You're sitting with your team and they talk about teams cuz these guys are surrounded by, uh, you know, a nutritionist, a massage therapist, a strength coach, uh, the what, you know, and the bigger you, the higher you get, the more staff you have around them. So that each player is himself a cottage industry for these remora fish who just swim in their slipstream sucking off 5% here, 3% there of their winnings, and there's something desperate and sad about that that goes along with the weird glamor of it. Because like tennis players, especially the guys are all bizarrely good looking. Like they all kind of look like European models somehow, and their girlfriends are always look like they just walked out of Gucci ads and you know, they tennis players have a good time. I mean, not maybe the way like NBA players do, but tennis players have a good time when they're out on tour, I think. And uh, but that, you know, like it's a double edged thing and I, uh, I find that did you guys ever read the Vince Spadia book?
Sonny00:48:35No, no.
JVL00:48:37So Vince Spadia was at one point like the 10th best American player. This is in the late nineties, early two thousands. And he was a top hundred guy at one point was a top 25 guy, I think, and he had a 20 25 match losing streak. And what that means in practical terms is that he went half of a calendar year, cuz you play every, you know, just tournament was every week there's a different tournament losing in the first round, despite the fact that he was one of like the hundred best players on the planet. Like, what is, what does that do to you? Right. And you know, like it, it made him go a little bit insane and his book is slightly insane. He became a rapper and it's hysterical. He's a really interesting get, uh, but tennis is filled with like characters like that. And the sport has changed so much since the seventies, right? Like in the seventies, it was really freewheeling. I mean, you know, like, you know, the us open in the seventies, like people in the crowd at Flushing Meadow, uh, not Flushing, uh, forest Hills were like firing guns, like a yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Like that. Like it was, I don't know the whole tennis is the best, right? Are you with me on the, the, the boxing gladiator side of it? Because it is unlike any other sport in like, you know, two people go down into this arena and the crowds have very clear favorites that they're rooting for and they like the crowds care about these players for reasons which don't always make sense.
Mike00:50:21Yes. I mean, the visuals, you know, recall all of this, you, which they did a good job of in this documentary. I will say, you know, they've got the, the, their banners, right. For their, for their country, you know, the, the, the flag, whatever, you know, they're, they're, especially the Australian open, you know, everybody seems to be having a good time. Everybody's got a drink in their hand, you know, I mean, there's a very kind of, and, and then the visual of that, of the, the sort of bowl that they're, that they're playing in. Yeah. Like, you know, we recall the Coliseum and all these things.
Sonny00:50:54Yeah. Well, I, I do hope the, the second, so there's a second half of this, uh, show that's coming out in June, I think, um, uh, in, or maybe earlier, maybe it was may, um, but there's a second half of this show coming out and I'm, I'm hoping that they get some Davis cup action in there. Cause that, that is when it, that's, that's when it gets like really crazy, um, in terms
JVL00:51:15of the, the cheering and that sort of stuff, but do you guys have favorite, uh, favorite heels? And faces from the world of tennis in your times as, as tennis fans, because there is a vague professional wrestling aspect to it where every once in a while, you'll get a guy like, uh, Nikolai Davidov, who, you know, who, who like embraces being a heel and will like taunt the crowd in New York during the us open.
Mike00:51:43And well, I don't know about, about a heel, but I mean, I was always, you know, what, when I was a kid, it was Samper's Agassi, right? That was like, that was the. And obviously Samper's was the superior player. And I was always a Samper's guy. I just always thought like, like I, I, that's it. You're off the show. Yeah. I'm off the show because you're such a, you're, you're, you're an Agassi. Samper's number one. Samper's is number one. Agassi guy. Samper's is number. But like, but that does recall the sort of, I mean, this was at the same time I was paying attention to, to professional wrestling and it was like, uh, I was, I was a Wolfpack fan, you know, why, why I don't know, because that's what I was and there were some kids who were not, you know, it was like, but, but, but I always, I, I always thought that like Samper's looked like a tennis player and Agassi didn't. And that was like my, that was my heuristic. That was my, the way I judged it. And I just, you know, I mean the, the, the, I, the serving, you know, uh, power from Samper's was always just something I, because I was always a terrible server. It was like, that's what I wanted to be like, but I don't know. I didn't hate Agassi either.
JVL00:52:47I just preferred Samper's Samper's is the Samper's. And Federer, the only two guys I've ever seen who had a gear that they could go to were all of a sudden a match that was very, very close. You'd look away for a minute and a half and they had just gone up two breaks, you know, like it'd be a super close match and you know, you're pulling for the, you're pulling for like Agassi, right? You're oh, come on, you know, and, and Andre's playing really well and you get up to go get a bag of chips and you come back and all of a sudden three games have gone by. And, you know, Sampras just reeled off 14 straight points or something like that. And you're like, how the fuck does he do that?
Sonny00:53:29Because he just had another gear he could go to Sampras was the only guy still to this day. And I, I realized that this is a, this is, this is mostly a function of me not caring about the French open. So I, I have watched very little of an adult on clay, but Sampras is the only guy I've ever seen play who would get into the zone on his serve and be completely unbreakable. It's it's like his, it wasn't, it wasn't the power. Cuz I think, you know, even nice of it could hit the ball harder. Right. Um, but it was a fact that he could pinpoint it anywhere in the box at any angle at any speed and w would just go, go and it was all perfectly disguised.
JVL00:54:11That's the other thing is his serve was perfectly disguised. He gave nothing away with where it was going or was the Greg Maddox of tennis.
Sonny00:54:19Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, it's, it's, you know, I mean, granted it's, it's because I was, you know, ages 10 to 16 or whatever, when Sampras was at his absolute peak. So this is like the thing that is imprinted on my brain as a tennis fan, um, as greatness, but like watching him serve at Wimbledon was the single most impressive display of tennis I've ever seen ever just like that, that like five year stretch where he won six of the, the titles or whatever. Yeah.
JVL00:54:49Um, Sonny, did you have favorite, favorite, uh,
Sonny00:54:52That's funny. I, I was never, I, I, I never really got into that aspect of, of tennis so much, except for, except for there was like a two year stretch where, uh, my, uh, it was the first, the first Wimbledon's I can remember watching with my, my dad, uh, I think it was back to back years. It was Edberg and Becker in the finals. And my dad was a huge Stefan Edberg fan for some reason, which like, okay, Edberg's great. And I was like kind of neutral. So I was just like, yeah. I hope Becker wins. So, so we were, so it was like, it was like in the house. I was like, yeah, come on Boris. And Becker, I think won both of those fun, or at least I, I can't remember if they played twice in, in, in the Wimbledon final, but, uh, but like, I remember cheering for him
JVL00:55:38and Becker won and my dad was just like furious because I was cheering for Becker as a 17 year old. Maybe. I think he might be the youngest guy to, to have ever won. Both he and Steffi Graf were like.
Mike00:55:52You know, I mean, they, they're, they broke in extreme, you know, at that extremely young age with some big major tournament win like that. Yeah. And, uh, and put it on the map for, for Germany, cuz that now I think tennis is like huge in Germany. Um, which it wasn't, it is, which it wasn't before. Lots of, lots of very good.
Sonny00:56:11Go ahead. Yeah. So the, it was the 89 Wimbledon is the one I'm thinking of Becker beat Edberg 607, 664 in the final. Um, and I, I, once again, I remember, I just remember like being very, very into Boris Becker that year, uh, which, uh, drove my father to distraction, to like proxy isms of rage. Cuz I was just, I was just doing it to cheer against him.
Mike00:56:38I don't know. So, so I wanted to ask you guys since, since we all played tennis, um, to take it out of the, uh, professional level, uh, talk, uh, something that I've been thinking about ever since I moved up, up to the Washington area. Like 12 years ago, whatever was the way in which tennis is sort of, um, approached in different parts of the country. So where I grew up in Atlanta, uh, tennis was extremely democratic. It was extremely open to, uh, to everybody because what, what you had were, uh, this, this outward sprawl into the suburbs of, um, you know, relatively inexpensive suburban housing communities with swimming tennis clubs. And. Uh, you just have this explosion of tennis throughout the area and everybody played and everybody, every member of my family played my mom, my dad, my brother and me. Uh, and there were a ton of families like that. And so it was very much a, you know, it was, uh, not unusual for public school kids to play tennis. That, that was sort of the, the, the way I thought about it. And then I moved up here to, to the Washington DC area. And it became very clear to me that that wasn't the case in this, in this part of the country. Um, and it was a little more of an elite sport, um, which I think is probably more of the norm. Um, but it was just not my experience. I was just, I don't know what, if that was like your experience JVL and, and, and, and Jersey with tennis or, or, or what it was, am I sort of making up, uh, a dynamic that, that isn't actually there?
JVL00:58:11Uh, I mean, so I don't know about you, Sonny. I mean, for me, you know, growing up as a kid in the eighties and nineties. In, in Jersey, tennis was, I mean, I was not an elite kid, but I was also not a very good tennis player. Uh, and the kids who were good, I mean, first of all, in New Jersey, you know, you just, you know, which towns are gonna have great high school tennis teams by just looking at the average income for the town, right? You just literally just pull up the census map, uh, you know, the five richest towns in New Jersey have the five best tennis programs. And that's a function of two things. One of which is. Uh, the enormous cost that has to be sunk in to, to learn it cuz it's a stroke. It is both a stroke sport and a stroke sport that you have to start very early. It's not, I mean, you know, you can take up golf in theory as a nine year old, right? Or as a 10 year old, uh, if you're gonna be a good tennis player, not, not professional, if you're gonna be like a, a middle States ranked tennis player, just something like that. There's somebody who plays D three college tennis. You. You have to be playing pretty seriously, certainly by the time you're seven or eight, uh, and you need to be, have been in lessons all the, but then also you need to be renting indoor court time because you don't have year round access to, to courts cuz of the weather. And that means you're belonging to a tennis club and you're paying for, you know, the hourly rental fees on it. And so I, I imagine maybe I'm wrong, but that I imagine that in parts of the country where you have year round outdoor courts available, tennis is probably a little more. Yeah. Democratic. But I don't know. Yeah.
Sonny00:59:55Sonny, what was your experience? Well, when I was, so I moved from, I lived in England and I didn't really play in England except, you know, like begging the ball against the side of my house. Um, but in, when we moved to Florida and like lots of people played tennis in Florida, I lived on the panhandle of Florida and like tons and tons of people played there. And I was like on my middle school team, like the 29th out of 30 kids, you know? On the team, whatever. I, it's not like I was a serious player or anything. Um, but in Virginia, I mean, I was on the, I, so I, I lived in Stafford County, Virginia, which is about 40 miles south of DC. Um, it's kind of right between DC and Richmond, um, uh, and went to like, you know, a mid-size school in a, in a, in a mid-size district in Virginia. Um, and I was on the varsity team all four years and, you know, uh, was. I was like on in the top six for three of those years. So like I was playing matches that counted. Um, but I was never like, I, I mean like I was good for a small middle Virginia district. Right. Right. But like, I wouldn't have even bothered trying out for like the UVA club team. Like I was like, I wouldn't like not, not even like, you know, I, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have like wasted my time going and being like, Hey guys, wanna, wanna play some tennis? Cause it would've gotten fucking smoked off the court. I mean like, and like, again, I was like, I was like a good high school player, you know, for my small Virginia district.
Mike01:01:33But like, but see, but see what you guys are talking about is, is, is, you know, going to those next levels. And, and I would say 99% of the people that I played tennis with had no desire to do anything, but play recreationally. And it was like, it was like playing little league. It was like playing, you know, zero. See, that's what I think is different about, I would say zero.
Sonny01:01:54Yeah. Yeah. There was definitely not much of that in, in nobody plays tennis for fun.
Mike01:02:00Oh, that it's just, again, not my, not my experience. This is like, you know, the parents get together, uh, they're on their team in the neighborhood and they, they play their matches on Sunday morning and then go to, uh, the Mexican restaurant and, and get margaritas afterwards. Yeah.
Sonny01:02:16Like that's the kind of, you know what? That sounds lovely. It's great. You know what? Apparently, you know what? That's what it apparently is. Now is pickleball. Apparently pickleball.
Mike01:02:24Yes. My, my mom plays pickleball is everywhere. It's huge.
Sonny01:02:27Pickleball. I don't understand it. I don't, I don't, I, I saw, I saw a couple of people playing pickleball like two years ago at a court in Texas. And I was like, what are these assholes? What are they? What are they doing?
JVL01:02:37It looks kind of fun. On a tennis court.
Sonny01:02:39I'm not gonna lie. It looks kind of fun. And then, and then like a year later, like all of the courts were full of people playing pickleball.
Mike01:02:45I was like, what is happening? And now there's, now there's this kind of class warfare because the tennis players are saying. We are forming our courts and the pickleball courts and the pickleball saying cultural
JVL01:02:56appropriation, but the people have spoken, we gotta push back, gotta push back against
Sonny01:03:00pickleball. Fuck pickleball.
JVL01:03:02I, I will say, I will say before we get outta here, cuz we're starting to run long. I will say this about tennis for anybody listening who has even the slightest bit of interest in that, uh, all sports are different live than they are on television. But of the sports I have seen both live and on television up close. Tennis is more different than any other. And if you can go to like whatever the local ATP or even challenger tour stop is for wherever you live and they have 'em all over the country, right? I mean, Cincinnati has an ATP, uh, stop, um, Washington has one, the used to be called the lake Mason. Now it's something different and just go to an outer court and where you can stand as close to a professional tennis match as you can do. High school varsity tennis match. I mean, you literally just stand up, you know, like with your face pressed up against the chain link fence and watch it. It two people who are ranked 300 in the world, neither of whom has any chance of ever even making it to the main draw of a grand slam tournament are the craziest, most unbelievable tennis players you have ever seen in your life. And you cannot conceive of how fast the ball is moving. In godly amounts of spin that they put on it. I mean, watching the ball tracking in the air as you know, the, the parabolas that it is moving at, it's, it's crazy and it different in ways that even like getting up close to professional baseball or up close to professional basketball is not as different as, as tennis
Sonny01:04:45is. I will. I, I will say that being courtside for a professional basketball game is, is eye opening. In its own way, like watching a guy watch, watching a professional basketball player take five steps and move the entire length of the court is like, what the, these people are not human, but no, but with tennis, it is, I mean, with, with tennis, as you're saying, like when you, when you go to the, when you go to the, like, you know, the court 16, uh, at the leg Mason or whatever it is, you know, it's like, you're there, you're, you're like on the court essentially. Yes. And it is, it is. Yeah. It's, it's something else. It is something else. I've never been to, I've never been to a Wimbledon or a us open or anything like that. I've always kind of wanted to, and it's, I've been in the us open now that I live in New
JVL01:05:32York. I go to, I go to these things all the time, but, uh, but I've been to the us open once and it was a fabulous experience. I bet. I'm looking forward to doing it again this summer as a New Yorker, as a native,
Sonny01:05:43as a native, as a native of New York, New York city. All right. That's all the time we're giving to this show. Uh, Mike, thanks for joining us. We're excited to have you on, on board.
JVL01:05:53We'll see you again next week, Michael. We do that. We do this every week.
Sonny01:05:57Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, yeah. You've, you've really signed up for something here. You're in a, you're in for a world to hurt my friend. All right. Uh, we'll be back next week. Uh, see you guys then.
JVL01:06:07So, Mike, you got anything for us?
Sonny01:06:16Some good, you got some outtakes, good baby outtakes, new guys got to bring the outtakes.
Mike01:06:20Oh, geez. Let's see. Uh, let's see. Oh, so, uh, Henry, uh, my oldest is playing basketball now, um, which is interesting. How's that going?
Sonny01:06:31It's how's that working out for you?
Mike01:06:34He's a fantastic defender. He's a fantastic defender, nice, tenacious, tenacious arms up like this, but you know, it's been like very chill. It's a very chill seven and eight year olds until last Saturday. And we had. Uh, we were playing a team where the coaches are like way too into what's going on on the court and do a level where did you beat someone with a tire iron? Not quite, but like, you know, it's bad when one of the players is again, these are second graders. One of the players is screaming at his teammates and, and, and these kids are like half of them have never played basketball before in their lives until like six weeks ago. And it, and he's like the veins. The vein is bulging out of the seven-year-old's neck, you know, as he's screaming at his teammates because they, and they ended up winning. So like, I don't know what the big deal was. Um,
Sonny01:07:30And so he's a winner. He's a winner. Winner's win. Apparently. Uh, I was Winners win. That's right. Losers complain about the veins.
Mike01:07:38Losers. Losers. Losers are more concerned with what the snack is afterward, apparently, which is what all of our players are, but we're having a good time. We're having a fun time. And, uh, I don't know, I don't, I don't have, it's just like so outrageous to me to see these, these, these people over, over nothing. It's like seven to eight year olds anyway.
Sonny01:07:56I'm sure it's fine.
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