Episode 95 of the Tennis Abstract Podcast welcomes Joe Posnanski, senior writer at The Athletic and author of several books, including The Soul of Baseball, The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini, and the forthcoming Baseball 100. Joe is a long-time tennis player and fan who has often written about tennis.
Joe and I cover a lot of ground in 75 minutes, starting with a discussion of Djokovic’s and Osaka’s wins at the Australian Open. He talks about what might be stopping the younger generation of men from dethroning Djokovic and Nadal, why Naomi Osaka is different, how much credit to give to coaches, and whether the outstanding crop of young American women is underreported. Joe also shares his thoughts about how to compare players across eras, whether we ought to pay more attention to the amateur era, and what he’d write about if he could spend more time writing about tennis.
Thanks for listening!
(Note: this week’s episode is about 75 minutes long; in some browsers the audio player may display a different length. Sorry about that!)
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Podcast housekeeping:
- In case you haven’t heard, I’m 20 episodes into a short (~4 minutes) daily podcast called Expected Points. Here’s today’s episode.
- The TAP book club will reconvene next week with our next selection, John Updike’s 1968 novel, Couples. Read along with us, share your thoughts, and suggest topics/questions/comments for our discussion in a future episode.