Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka, and the Pressure of First-Strike Tennis

Torrey Hawkins (00:00.27)
The problem I have with Coco Golf is she's had so much success that we expect her to be at a certain level. The reality it is, the reality to me anyway, is that she's just the consummate overachieving counterpunisher who just matches up so well to different types and she competes so hard that you forget that she's still very mortal on a number of fronts.

And the problem I have is that we have this because she's so good and her ranking is so high, she's one, two slams and so on and so forth, that we are, we forget that she's still very mortal. And that's not to say that the rest of them aren't. It's just to say there aren't, there isn't three or four huge weapons or things that you can say, you know what, Cocoa Golf will destroy this player because of X, Y, and Z. She's still just a

What's that expression? She is the, the sum of her is greater than her parts. And I think that's, and that's where I'm getting at. We've got to appreciate she is the sum that's greater than her parts. Cause you can break down the parts as much as they're improving, by the way, she, the parts themselves still need some work. And I think that was my message to you is that I look at her a year ago, even.

Alvin Owusu (01:04.371)
That's a really, that's actually, that's, that's, that's almost perfect.

Torrey Hawkins (01:25.038)
Four years ago, Alvin, her forehand is markedly different. I mean, it's better, way better. All good players continue to tweak little things in the game and whatnot. Heck, late in his career, Fed, you know, went back to the drawing board on the one-hander, you know, in 12, whatever, grand slams in. So that's never not a thing. Her forehand is so much better. The technique is better, the ball's heavier, it's bigger. There's some other things still yet to fix. The serve looks great.

There are submissions with the toss, There are submissions with her serve selection. She had, I don't know how many double faults, but she also had a lot, had a few aces, and she had a bunch of service winners on second serves on my dad. So you know the actions there. It's just a matter of her finishing the rest of the forehand, I'm gonna say transformation, and the serve as well. But I say it to say, she's still, the sum is greater than her parts, and that's the genius slash.

the appreciation, if you're really wanting to watch Coco from that level, you have to look at her through that lens. That's not.

Alvin Owusu (02:27.135)
And I will say welcome to everyone who's catching up to us mid conversation. Welcome to the best three podcast. I'm Alvin, that's Tory. You're catching us mid conversation right after Irina Sabalenka took out Cocoa Golf in the Miami Open finals. I believe that final score was something like six, two, four, six, six, three to Ms. Sabalenka. And we will get to her and some of the other players on the women's side as we've officially kind of closed the first quarter of the year.

in this weird reverse swing of hardcore to start our season before we go to the clay. But to your point about this kind of like very loose Cocoa Golf to Roger Federer comparison, Fed started using his feet to step in and take the backhand and a lot of the things that we've talked about with Cocoa's forehand have to do, in my opinion, with her footwork. So I think the one thing to always keep in mind with her is she's been with us for so long.

Torrey Hawkins (03:08.344)
Right. Right.

Alvin Owusu (03:26.333)
Right? In the conversation at the top of women's game for so long, it's hard to keep in mind that she literally just turned 22. Like last week, two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, she turned 22. She, okay, she beat Venus at Wimbledon the year I was there, which is 2019.

Torrey Hawkins (03:37.326)
All right. How long is your tour now, Alvin? Five, six years?

Alvin Owusu (03:48.007)
Right? It's 2026.

Torrey Hawkins (03:49.814)
2026. Wow. So you're talking it's like seven, seven years. I mean, give or take. I mean, that's, that's crazy. That and possibly longer because you know, that was her coming out party, but that was that obviously there's wild cards before that there were, you know, other matches and you know, when you're still finishing out junior slash playing some pro she wasn't full on but wow. That's it's, it's I'm glad you say that because it reminds all of us.

Alvin Owusu (03:53.92)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (04:14.729)
I mean, I gotta check that, am I right? Yeah, God bless, was, yeah, I was there the day, I think I was there that day and it happened on Center Court and I had an outside ticket, that's what it was. Yeah, that's wild.

Torrey Hawkins (04:17.272)
Did you your wife?

Torrey Hawkins (04:28.28)
that it's, and she's accomplished so much in those seven years. that, and that can never not be overstated. I mean, that you just have to continue to appreciate her body of work that she's put together. And I say it to say, she can continue to improve these things, Alvin. That's the, that's the crazy thing is that while we're all, you know, armchair quarterback and technique here and there, she's, she's done pretty well. She only has more to gain.

Alvin Owusu (04:45.351)
Right, it-

Torrey Hawkins (04:57.39)
What I got from her second set win today, it was just all out gut check. She was just like, yo, I'm gonna claw, dig, scrape, scratch, hustle, whatever I had to do to get through this second set. And there were some moments, right? There were some moments in the third where if she could have just managed a few things just a little better, she could have kept that match a little closer. And we all know that Arena still goes through some mental and a few.

nerve issues to close out some matches and that could have happened. Unfortunately, she maintained that early break and just wrote it on out. good match, good match. And I know you're to probably bring up the story. The story is good for tennis and I think she is the perfect foil for Arena Sabalaca and no doubt many others, know, she's determined, proves it. Go ahead.

Alvin Owusu (05:45.855)
I mean, when I say good for tennis, it's a, I mean, what has Sabrina Sablenka done this year, in the first quarter of the season? She's played three tournaments, she's filed one Grand Slam, and she's won, now she's done the Sunshine Double back to back. The story is she's the clear cut number one right now. As you look at performance and consistency, right? Some players have shown the ability to get close to her.

right, to push her, to bring the best out of her. And occasionally it will take a superwoman effort to beat her in a final, right, which happened this year against Rebecca. And a few times last year, pretty much every Grand Slam final she was in that she didn't win took the best out of someone to beat her. I think we're still looking at the, there's an evolution of Irina Sabalenka that is still happening.

Torrey Hawkins (06:36.536)
Right. Right.

Alvin Owusu (06:44.002)
and you're starting to see her kind of go through some of these tests and check them off. I still think her and Rebecca is a bit of a toss up. I mean, they've met in all three events that she's played this year. She lost in three, she beat her in three, she beat her in straights. Someone's gonna finish three matches, two in one or one in two, whatever, it's fine. I'm not really to really take much away from that quite yet, but.

those two again, I've given the Hancock kind of a, know, these two forces meeting each other and it's a match that's fun to watch for a different reason than this matchup is fun to watch. This is a, this takes everything out of Arena and forces her to face her own demons and play the best version of her own tennis. And when you said like,

Torrey Hawkins (07:37.506)
Yep, I agree with that.

Alvin Owusu (07:39.578)
Her ability to close out matches has been questionable at times like Coco forces it out of her if she's not nails on Coco will let her lose if she is nails on she can take it from Coco and therefore It's all on it's kind of all on her racket

Torrey Hawkins (07:53.23)
It's all on Arena, which is not a comfortable spot to be in. And at the same time, you know it's in your hands, you know, for better or for worse. and that's again, which is why I think she's the perfect foil for Arena and other players, you know, they that have that ability to tag and to strike and step and dictate play. And she's just so, she, Coco is just so

competitive in those moments where, you know, she's her counter ability. More important to me, than the, you mentioned, and then the court tactics is even that's even her kind of her personality, her, just her dogged determinedness, you know, to make sure that she's going to, you know, match you, you know, tit for tat, so to speak. And I love that about her and I love that about the game. And I want to make sure where it's

that in itself is a superpower, right? So let's not take that away by any means. Sometimes when you look at a superpower, you're looking at something quote unquote tangible, you know, the old eye test, know, big serve, big forehand, you know, you're looking at the clock, you're looking at the serve speed, you're looking at aces, you're looking at something in the stack column, you know, to help, you know, to help, you know, kind of gird your point, so to speak.

Alvin Owusu (09:07.462)
Yep. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (09:19.192)
Coco, I saw the stats, Alvin. I think for the first set that she lost 6-2, Coco had a higher first serve percentage than Arena. Not much, but it was, and then, but her first serve point one percentage was quite a bit lower, which tells me that the serves are there. Obviously she had three double faults, I think, in the first, and Arena didn't have any, and yet she is two for seven. Arena had seven break point chances on Coco's serve.

Alvin Owusu (09:27.92)
Right, right.

Torrey Hawkins (09:48.014)
with 63 or whatever percent first serve percentage made. So it wasn't like she wasn't serving well. And those two double faults, you know, often some of those double faults came either early in the game, mid game or on her own ad. We're not talking, she wasn't double fault in the way. The break points were hard to come by. So anyway, I say it to say, I really feel like Cobra is going to continue to improve. Her serve looks way better as I mentioned in the outset. Foreign looks better. There's some other things that need to...

Alvin Owusu (10:00.942)
Right, right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (10:16.14)
take place a little bit but anyway with that said

Alvin Owusu (10:18.76)
Let's go a little bit into both the serve and the forehand, but not in the way that we sometimes evaluate it from a technical standpoint. I wanna go back to your point about, Coco's making a lot of first serves, right? But she's, first serve percentage, points won on first serves made, not as high. So I, and I'm not even looking at the numbers right now, but when I look at it, if you're serving a lot of first serves in, and,

going off my very short term memory of watching the match, the gun was on her side, she's serving plus 115 on all those first starts. It's not like she's pushing them in, when she's making them, she's making them. I think what it comes down to in this situation, and I'm gonna get your opinion, is because she's spending so much effort thinking about the serve, she's not thinking so much about the plus one.

Torrey Hawkins (11:14.07)
And the plus one ain't there, unfortunately.

Alvin Owusu (11:16.316)
It ain't there. Well, it's also not there if your feet aren't there, if you're not looking for it.

Torrey Hawkins (11:19.662)
slash still looking at you, sir, go in court, right? So I think it's to your point.

Alvin Owusu (11:21.829)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (11:25.736)
So how do you train those? Do you tend to look at those like separate things or do you have to train them together?

Torrey Hawkins (11:26.155)
Let's go.

Torrey Hawkins (11:31.79)
You have to, well, you train them together at some point. You gotta make the serve first, right? When I'm going through a technical change with a player, you've been courtside with me several times when I was doing it. First of all, it takes several sessions. they're phenomenal, takes weeks. If they are good, and I say good as a step below phenomenal, it takes months. And if they are just pretty good to average, it takes you years.

because the technique has to set. You know, I use the analogy of jello. You you gotta let it set long enough, undisturbed, you know, and many a player has taken, you know, what could be a small tweak and made it be a hot mess because they've tweaked it, they've added this, they got an extra opinion on that before you know it. It's the set it and forget it did not happen. It never set. And every time you open the refrigerator and kept putting your toothpick in the jello, it's still watery. that's the...

Alvin Owusu (12:30.066)
Which could be a pressure test moment in a match too. Like that could be the stick it finger in there.

Torrey Hawkins (12:32.884)
100%. And especially, you got that right. And especially if you're still playing. So let's put that there because it's not like she stopped playing to fix things, which was one of my critiques, one of my few critiques, but that was one of my critiques. The second part is now that you can kind of get past the serve, the location that you're actually making the serve, you can now get your mind on to, I'm making it and I'm looking for this type of return back off of these kind of shots. Her out wide slice to the album was phenomenal. I mean, she had...

Alvin Owusu (12:41.852)
Right. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (13:01.962)
Asa, had first strike, she had, you know, service winners. Also that serve routinely off the do side out wide slice. I mean, it was a joke. Every time she went out there, Arena had trouble. mean, and Arena was even looking for her, her can opener, her buggy, her buggy whip, nothing could really hold it. The problem is she missed it. Arena tagged the four on the second serve so often it was feast of famine a little bit for Coco. Going back to the point though, after I

work on the serve itself. I start doing a heavy dose of plus one feeds, even if I'm on that side of the court with the player, just to mentally get them to move on from watching the stinking ball go in the box. Because now you've got to get your feet and your mind on the ball, which was the whole point of the serve, was to get your plus one. And now we have to start getting that part trained in. I'll do a drill.

30 minutes of every two hour, three hour practice where the players just have to do serve plus one and it's a race. I have the server do a serve plus two and the returner does a return plus one. So you really got a race to make sure you can establish a first plus one and then the returner is doing their best to go against you with their plus one and then that next plus, the servers, so now their second shot post serve.

has to be a ball that's big enough to go through the person, assuming the first strike wasn't. And if my returner can catch that ball, okay, then that's a let. So I got the serve. I assume I'll make the serve. The returner makes the ball. Great. Here's my plus one. The returner kind of knows I'm going open court, I'm going behind him. Great. If I had a great serve and a great plus one, that happens. But that didn't happen every time, nor should you expect it happen every time. Now, here comes that ball three. You're serving.

If you can take that ball open court, back behind them or coming forward, that the returner cannot catch, stop or somehow impede the movement on, that counts. That's a quality exchange right there. And if you think about it, those of who play at a decent level, that's very hard to do time in and time out. And I know my players are doing well if they can do that drill. And to my point, that's my third drill, so to speak, the third progression, the final progression.

Torrey Hawkins (15:23.278)
going into point play because now I know you're not thinking about it. Now I know you're looking for the plus one and now I know you're using your serve well to set up. And if you get the occasional, that's great. If you get the occasional plus one winner, great. But you really feel good about what you can do on the other 75 % of the time.

Alvin Owusu (15:42.098)
Right, it's an interesting thing. As you were going, we're talking about the plus ones. Almost the evolution of, let's say tennis, and all the way from like, Navratilova to like now, Serves are typically, and I'm I'm going off script here, gotta wreck it, right? Serves are typically held with continental grip, right? Boom, you hit the serve, boom, one more serve and then volley. Same grip, right? You're not having to make a lot of adjustments there. It's just C ball, hit ball. Hopefully your technique and your feet are working well.

Torrey Hawkins (15:59.181)
yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (16:08.43)
No. You got it.

Alvin Owusu (16:12.025)
As we slide over to a, you know, from a continental to an Eastern, if you will, right? A little easier to pick it up, do some things, right? Semi-Western's a little bit more of a compromise. You need a little more time now, right? So if I'm going, and I have an extreme semi-Western, right? It's gonna be really hard for me to go big first serve with a strong return coming back, have enough time to then create a first strike.

If I look, if I'm too tight on the baseline, I'm actually doing myself a disfavor. I'm at disservice, right? And so, and we talked about this, I don't know, a couple weeks ago with Coco, yeah. That positioning battle, right? When you talk about her serve and her forehand, to put those two together and make them weapons, it's going to, it's just gonna be hard. It's just gonna be hard. And so for her, it's just gonna be a different path. And that's probably okay.

Torrey Hawkins (16:47.074)
You that? You got that right.

Torrey Hawkins (17:03.928)
Yup. Yup.

Alvin Owusu (17:11.221)
Because going over to her forehand, I think I saw some things today that make me think, I now see why this battle is so tricky for Arena. Because it's so different. Nobody actually hits the ball like Coco does. It's because of her extreme grip, her flight path is different. She doesn't hit a consistent ball, right? So it's really hard to get, it's hard, exactly, you can't get grooved on it, right?

Torrey Hawkins (17:20.014)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (17:26.478)
That's true.

Alvin Owusu (17:40.679)
Her and Elena, it's just like, they're just arm wrestling basically. they're just, who's gonna, right. And so, but you look at Coco, it's a lot of like, you saw Arena like sometimes will get caught off guard. Coco might happen to sting one, especially on the backhand side. She's like, slice forehead off the baseline. And then sometimes Coco goes with her normal shot, which is a little higher, maybe a little bit of action on it. And Sabalinka was a little unsure with her footing about.

Torrey Hawkins (17:44.462)
100%. I hate you, Lops and her and Coco. 100%.

Torrey Hawkins (18:07.726)
Right. Right. Right. Right. And then you come in on it and she passes well. She didn't pass. Today, open stance, down the line, slider. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Like that, she makes it look so routine, but that is a hard shot.

Alvin Owusu (18:07.889)
how to move in and take that ball because it's not a ball she sees with any kind of regularity.

Alvin Owusu (18:15.501)
Right, right. So it's almost like.

Alvin Owusu (18:25.445)
Right. But it's like, she can't like, she can't necessarily, doesn't do so well dictating off of that forehand side. But when she's not tasked with doing anything except for run around and hit it, that's when, and like, that's why this matchup looks so like, looks the way it does. Cause. Arena is going to make her run around and hit balls and Coco is going to make arena continue to execute on offense. And if she does.

Torrey Hawkins (18:46.146)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (18:55.293)
She wins, but it's like a 60-40 split or 55-45 split. Maybe higher than that.

Torrey Hawkins (19:00.908)
and on a bad, like the first set, it's closer to a 70-30, but Alvin, that's...

Alvin Owusu (19:05.699)
Or like the second set or like French open it the other way

Torrey Hawkins (19:10.358)
Alvin, the first set was 6-2 arena and I think the point total was 30 points to 22. Even though it was a four game, seemed like a blowout, it was eight points difference and it was two for seven on break points. So it's not like it wasn't contested. I mean, the score didn't look as close, but you're talking eight points, legit eight points difference in the two and she only won two games. So I say that to say you got to appreciate this matchup is very, it's very, a lot closer. I want to add to your previous point about the

Alvin Owusu (19:39.047)
Please do.

Torrey Hawkins (19:39.63)
curve in the forehand for Coco, you also got to add in that the women's game, the return is the weapon. So you add on top of that, which makes it even more more difficult to make that happen. I felt a ton of arenas errors came off of the Coco return, you who's obviously a great return on her own, right? I think Coco was averaging. I want to say they said 46 % return a serve and breaking serve. I mean, that's that is crazy.

Alvin Owusu (20:04.444)
That's wild. She's breaking every, almost every other service game.

Torrey Hawkins (20:09.208)
Period. For the tour. We're not talking today. Today, she did a good job today. In the tour. I think she's like number three in the tour in the world.

Alvin Owusu (20:11.932)
Right. Well, and that's, but that was, it was four, but like, want to, I need to look this up. Who's ahead of her? Like who's, who's breaking with more frequency than that? That's, I'm gonna say Sableco might actually be higher.

Torrey Hawkins (20:20.31)
Exactly.

We're back in us. Sabalinka. The list is small to be sure. And Spialta, you know what mean? It's gotta be. It's gotta be those three.

Alvin Owusu (20:32.081)
That it.

Yeah, that's actually, I need to look this up. I'm sure, actually if you're looking it up, please put it in the comments. I wanna know who one, two, and three are in terms of breaking serve percentage. If Coco is four, because they showed it during the match, That Arena's number one in holding serve and Coco is fourth in breaking serve. I wanna know where Arena sits on that breaking serve list.

Torrey Hawkins (20:57.358)
I got a hunch that tells me she's two or three. I don't give her one on that even though her ranking's there. I bet Ega's up there pretty high. If I had to go into my head, had to make me pick one, I'd say Ega. Just because she is so good at it. And in terms of breaking, now I'm not talking everything else.

Alvin Owusu (21:16.048)
Well, okay, well, Arena's lost one match this year and she is number one in holding serve. So if you're not breaking her, how else is she winning the match?

Torrey Hawkins (21:27.902)
That's what I'm saying. Again, I'm saying too. I I'm not talking she ain't 15. You know what mean? She's got a pretty good turn on right. anyway, just to your point, I like the foil that it creates. I like the polar opposites that it is. It really gives, if you're an arena who likes the rhythm, if you're Rebecca that likes the rhythm, if you like these kind of toe-to-toe matchups and it's just a matter of us, know, C ball, hit ball and.

Alvin Owusu (21:29.596)
Yeah

Alvin Owusu (21:35.429)
Right, all right.

Torrey Hawkins (21:53.624)
who can take the strike, who has better balance, has better leverage, you know, on striking that ball. I like that matchup a lot, but at the same time, then there's the, you know, on one end of that spectrum, you got the Paolini's and the, you know, and then, then it's Fiontec and then Coco. All kind of in a sense in a row of the taking it early or taking it deep, but they're very good at countering. They're just different versions of that same kind of a very, countering slash counterpunish style. So it's a, I, I,

I was not only entertained, I was very impressed with the high quality of how contested the points were, obviously a lot on, you know, Cocoa Surf slash the return games. You know the Sabalinka Surf games are going to either be, again, feast for famine. It's gonna be an ace, it's gonna be a first strike. She did a great job today of working that ball wide instead of trying to go through Cocoa. I thought in the second set she got away from her strategy. She started going back through her. Cocoa was back to being.

Briar Rabbit in the Briar Patch. I mean, she was just tagging balls, loved it. And it's hard to It's hard to take an on the rise ball and angle it off and take a little bit off and hit to the corner. You saw a lot of funky looking finishes. The backhand was kind of stiff and straight. She was trying to yank it over there and finesse it over there, which is hard to do, especially if you don't get a lot of rhythm and have a lot of long points. And when you do get a long point, you're trying to get your rhythm as well, but you go to that Coco Golf backhand and now you're fending it off.

Alvin Owusu (23:03.918)
Mm-hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (23:18.126)
You're not striking, you're not in control. I there was one point, I think in the third, where they went, had about six to eight exchanges each on the back. Maybe not that long, maybe five each on the backhand side. Backhand, backhand, backhand, backhand, backhand. think Arena actually won that exchange. And it was almost one of the longer points of the match, especially off the backhand. But you're so busy trying not to let Coco get a groove off the backhand that you don't go to the backhand. And I think it actually gave Arena a lot of confidence to know.

I can match up backhands with you. I don't wanna do it often, but given the need, I can do it if I have to. It's just not the easiest or the most efficient way to do so.

Alvin Owusu (23:49.988)
Right, right.

Alvin Owusu (23:58.525)
You know, kind of with that being said, okay, so this event in particular, we got Coco in the final. She pushes Sabalenka. We gotta keep the main thing the main thing. Arena is on one right now. She has found the perfect mix of like, how often do I need to play in order to be fresh and ready? She skipped all of the Middle Eastern swing, comes back, takes two tournaments on the trot.

that's so whatever she's doing. Two Masters 1000s, I mean the women are only playing Masters 1000s, mean they've been playing Grand Slam, Masters, Masters, Masters, Masters. It's kind of a, it's a pretty crazy run. And you start looking at some of the other women who have played all five of those events or four of those events and with varying levels of some up and downs in there. But I think she's shown that that path works for her. mean, Rebecca and I did something similar. I think she went to Doha.

Torrey Hawkins (24:28.91)
Who, matches 1000s on the track? mean, to your-

Torrey Hawkins (24:42.798)
and

Alvin Owusu (24:57.084)
pulled out in the middle of Doha and then didn't play Dubai and then went, know, finals, semi-finals here. So her only two losses of the year were against, have been against Arena and then beat her once as well. So those two are still like, you know, meeting each other at at the ends of tournaments, you know, with Rebecca and not quite being ranked, her, her ranking did not kick in before the cutoff of this tournament. So we got them in the semis as opposed to the finals. That's fine, whatever.

Torrey Hawkins (25:09.038)
arena.

Alvin Owusu (25:26.556)
But that's how tournaments seem like they want to end with those two ladies. So I still feel pretty good about those two as our clear cut, know, leaders in the clubhouse coming out of the first quarter of the season. The cocoa thing.

Torrey Hawkins (25:33.71)
you

Alvin Owusu (25:42.717)
We're still not out of the woods yet. best case scenario, Coco Golf gets into the finals against Irina Sabalanka and some of the things that she's still working on as a player, so relatively young player, right, are prohibiting her from getting over the edge, right? But if we go all the way back to the Coco Golf of the last, this is called nine months now, how many top 10 wins do think she has? Off the top of your head.

Torrey Hawkins (25:45.518)
in terms of.

Torrey Hawkins (26:09.774)
Mmm.

Alvin Owusu (26:11.302)
Post Fringe Open.

Torrey Hawkins (26:15.874)
I'm gonna give you a number. I'm going to say...

Of the time she's played, I'm going to throw a number out and say 20. And I'm going to say of that 20, I would say just under half. I would say nine or 10 of 20-ish.

Alvin Owusu (26:40.26)
Nine top nine top 10 wins out of the 20 matches she's played.

Torrey Hawkins (26:44.44)
of the top 20 players played. That's what.

Alvin Owusu (26:46.487)
the top 20 players she's played. Okay,

Torrey Hawkins (26:48.979)
of the 20 times she may have played a top 10 player is what I'm trying to say.

Alvin Owusu (26:52.954)
Okay, she hasn't played a top 10 player 20 times. It's been closer to like half of that. Okay, it's been two. She's got two with a handful of them in there. And she got those two in the same tournament that she ended up winning Wuhan. She beat JPEG and Paulini. But she's, yeah, we're not out of the.

Torrey Hawkins (26:55.598)
So let's say, so my number wouldn't matter. If it's a 10, I'd say four or five and so on and so

Torrey Hawkins (27:15.406)
How many totals

Alvin Owusu (27:19.196)
If I did the quick math here, that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, sorry it's been three. So three out of seven.

Torrey Hawkins (27:33.739)
Okay, so that kind of I was thinking right the volume

Alvin Owusu (27:37.316)
No, no, you're right. It's four. She beat Ega at the United Cup. So it's like four out of eight or nine, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (27:45.422)
So my average is correct, my numbers were way off. And that's for last nine months? She only played that many? Wow, that's surprising.

Alvin Owusu (27:53.052)
Yeah, it's the weird, the losses are weird. They're all over the place.

Torrey Hawkins (27:59.626)
She's got a bunch of losses to a lot of players outside of and hadn't gotten there.

Alvin Owusu (28:04.325)
Well, I mean, obviously she lost to Naomi at the US Open, right? But she lost to Jasmine in Cincinnati, and she lost to Mboko in Canada. She wasn't typed in yet, yeah. Anasemova in China. Yeah. No, no, no, she lost Anasemova. She lost to Anasemova, yeah, yeah, yeah. But.

Torrey Hawkins (28:13.39)
Right, who wasn't up? And yeah, you're right, you're right. I get it. That's the moment who probably was still coming up at the time, wasn't quite within yet. That was one of her nine, give or take. That was last year, okay. Still, I would think she'd play 20. That's why I with 20. I'm like, she's gotta play 20. Over the course of 30 tournaments, she gets to the quarter semis or whatever finals for that matter. Heck, she won French last year. She didn't.

Alvin Owusu (28:41.687)
Right, but it's just since the French Open, and she had a fantastic clay court season last year, but since then, she has not necessarily been performing consistently at that level. It's more of a, she's performing like a five through eight seed as opposed to a one through four seed. But I think that's gonna kinda happen with her. Like she is a, as a player who doesn't necessarily dictate.

Torrey Hawkins (28:42.704)
Have a good day.

Torrey Hawkins (28:59.26)
for 100.

Alvin Owusu (29:07.003)
to get her wins, she is going to rely on rhythm. That is generally provided by other players. Also, she needs a decent amount of errors as well.

Torrey Hawkins (29:17.73)
that Ashraf Mahova is a good example of that. You know what mean?

Alvin Owusu (29:20.277)
Right, Mojoba, she owns Mojoba, because Mojoba, all the things that she does, it fits quite well with how Coco plays. You're gonna keep coming to the net, off a ball that's not that big, I'm just gonna go right by you. It's fine. And then Mojoba doesn't hit a ball that's big enough to go through Coco.

Torrey Hawkins (29:38.414)
nor big enough serve to catch up for the or to set the tone in the game. Marina can start off a game with an ace and then have a big four and be at 30 love. She can squander. She's squandered lot of today. She can squander a 30 love lead and get back 30 all and still be in control. Mahoba does not possess that same firepower, that same package to blow, you know, squander, you know, a 40 love into a 40-30 and then dig one out and then still feel like she can still get up 40 love on you in the next game. And then

and then hold it love the next service game, right? And so it's not like, know, and that's a, well, it's a very, well, it can be a bit volatile. It's very, it works, you know, and if you have that big game, you're gonna, you're gonna lean in on it, you know, and where Mohova doesn't have quite that lever yet as well, she won't, she's not as tall as a arena or even we're backing it for that matter. So that, that makes sense. The number, was, I was on point with the number just with the, the, sorry, with the ratio, not with the number of total, but that makes sense when I think about it.

Alvin Owusu (30:36.005)
Fair. So when we start looking at the landscape of, specifically the top 10 players right now, you're starting to see some shifting, right? Your top two are pretty clear, and this might end up being something that we say again when we start talking about the men's later on, maybe tomorrow. The top two are clear. Everyone else is kind of like, who's third here? Who's third, who's fourth? And on the women's side, like,

We'll get to Ega in a second. Ega's in the lurch right now. Amanda is somewhat in a space. Coco pops her head up every once in a while and when she does it looks good. I've been really, I'm gonna, for anyone who's been watching this show for a while understands how this is, you're not twisting my arm necessarily to say this, but Jess Magula looks like the clear cut number three player in the world right now.

Torrey Hawkins (31:33.656)
What, buddy?

Alvin Owusu (31:33.691)
She's been bang on since the beginning of the year. She's lost, I think, three matches and all three of them have been against Elena or Bacchina. Okay. All right.

Torrey Hawkins (31:42.734)
Yeah, not a bad year. And that's a match she's gonna lose. You know what mean? She's a clean hitter going against a cleaner hitter. She's five, seven, going against six feet. mean, she's, and Alana is fast at six feet. She might be the faster, taller cleaner striker. that's, hey, if you told me you're gonna be 98 % of ladies in the top 100, I would say sign me up. You know I mean?

Alvin Owusu (31:48.122)
Yeah!

Torrey Hawkins (32:12.61)
Sorry, if I'm JPEG. And that's, you know, there's no shame in that game, you know, to lose to Aniline or Bakina who is, let's face it, has the kryptonite of most players, you know what I mean? So the top three is a good one. I think, and this is more where I'm going with this album. We talked about this early in the year when we were going into this Australian Open of things and how there was gonna be a new, kind of a new top 10, right? We talked about the five through 10, we're gonna get pushed out.

Alvin Owusu (32:38.117)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (32:41.518)
there was a new three or four that were gonna insert themselves, right? And now, and we hadn't really given, I didn't at least, I knew Vicki was coming. I was plugging her in that 10 through 12 range. She's right there on the outside, kind of clawing her way in. I didn't think she'd be top 10 this fast. mean, was she headed there for sure? Was she, did I think she get to that this quickly? No, did I think Bencic would kind of be threatening to be this close? No, not now, and I didn't think.

that Jasmine would fall as quickly. And I definitely think Ega would, right? I thought Ega would be right there, not three or four, but certainly, or two, I guess she was. But I thought she'd still hover at five, six, seven in that range, depending on, Clay season coming back, she can crank it back up because she's still one of the best clay quarters on the women's tour. So I feel like it's happened faster than we thought, or at least faster than I thought. And that's gonna, it's, and now we're officially going into Clay, it's gonna get really interesting.

as this whole thing goes down. It's gonna be a very, very interesting. think Mahova plays pretty well on clay. Vicky is gonna have a lot of chances for points to gain, let's be honest, because she probably didn't have a huge play court season last year. And other players like him, or who are coming up, this is gonna be a very, very strong tail of the tape because you got Eagle who got to the semis, Coco who won it. A lot of points to defend on both sides.

Both those players have little bit of, you know, maybe some blood in the water and the Sharks are out. Alvin, the Sharks are out and to me it's going to be a very, very strong contest and that makes every moment you can, every moment you can gain going into the French all the more important to have going in.

Alvin Owusu (34:26.779)
Yeah, and to your point, like, when we started, you made this point about players who were moving out of the top 10 and into the top 10. It's interesting, Vicky's a really interesting one because up to this point in the year, I would say like she's probably performed at about four or five in the world level. Like to be honest, I watched her match between her and Mira Andreva in Miami a couple days ago when I was there. I watched every ball of that match.

Torrey Hawkins (34:52.046)
Sure.

Alvin Owusu (34:54.747)
The demeanor that Vicki has been carrying herself with, I noticed it in Doha first, and then all the way up through, she's no nonsense right now. She believes that, yeah, she carries herself on the tennis court, she is every bit top 10 in the world and a contender to win Grand Slams, and I think even Andy Roddick predicted it a little while ago, but it's not a far-fetched prediction. She's the truth.

Torrey Hawkins (35:04.779)
Right? she expected in that match. 100%. I felt that too.

Alvin Owusu (35:23.503)
She's the truth. And all the things that you can knock on her, like the second serve, it's shoring up. The forehand that she hits sometimes late, she still hits it. you know who else hit a forehand like that too? Steffi Graf. Very, very similar. Worked out fine for Steffi. I'm not saying Vicky is trending towards Steffi Graf. That air is rarefied, my friend. But great players work around it.

Torrey Hawkins (35:38.488)
Kind of. Kind of. Yeah. Very good.

Alvin Owusu (35:53.967)
They work around it. KokoGolf has won two Grand Slams with a questionable forehand. Great players will work around it, but Vicky is, she's gonna pop one in the next, one in the next eight. It just seems like it's going to happen at some point. But you're starting to see the levels kind of create themselves. Jessica is bumping up against, she is maximizing right now. She is bumping up against the arenas, not the arenas, it's arena and Elena. That big player over best of three sets is.

Torrey Hawkins (35:57.912)
I answer 100%.

Torrey Hawkins (36:10.286)
For sure.

Alvin Owusu (36:23.214)
typically going to beat her. Fine, okay. Everyone else, fall in line because she's holding the middle of court and you're not doing anything about it.

Torrey Hawkins (36:31.182)
We'll see that JPEG and Arena last year in the final of this tournament.

Alvin Owusu (36:35.322)
Uhhh, yeah probably. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (36:37.326)
The thing she held off Ayala and had we were talking about I remember the podcast we talking about about how JPEG is that litmus test for five in the world and I think I'm pretty sure she got to the final of this lost and lost to arena because I remember I'm pretty sure arena won it last year but you're exactly right and now we but again and now where I you mentioned she she while she's litmus that's that litmus test is on hardcore I don't know so much on clay while she's not terrible the clay court now exposes more the movement exposes more some of the things

Alvin Owusu (36:45.496)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (37:06.362)
Second serve.

Torrey Hawkins (37:07.448)
second serve and and just in general you know you need a little bit more time and the players that hit the ball a little cleaner you know tend to be a little bit more they hit themselves out of the coverage area a little bit and that's again and that's where Coco shine so you know while she has a lot of points to defend she's actually pretty good on clay herself this could be a disclaim court season has a lot in store and I got to be honest with you Alvin I'm thrilled to look up

who has current momentum now, there's so many contenders now in the WTA, in the top 10. mean, the previous top 10 aren't terrible. They're pretty darn good. And while they're on the sly, on the snide, trying to kind of get their footing back, they're still darn good. And the three or four moving in are gonna continue to, know, are gonna continue to push. Mira ain't done. You know what I mean? Anissa Mova ain't done.

You know, as far as they had an early exit or two from, Benchurch ain't done. You know what mean? You've got these players that are starting to play some ball. Mojova may play better on clay from time to time, especially with her ability to come forward and knock some balls off. mean, there's just, Jovic is coming, is still coming. You know, there's still so many players that that can still come through and play spoiler here. And in addition to your current top 10.

Alvin Owusu (38:18.01)
She's, yep, she's right there.

Torrey Hawkins (38:29.858)
You know, so man, it's gonna be, you know, what I hope is that each one of them goes to different, you know, 500s or whatever, and they don't all beat up on each other all the way going in. And everybody shows up in Paris at Roland-Guerreau's a little healthy, seasoned, ready, but healthy. You know what I mean? That was my only dig last year was so many players were pulling out because of the length of season. And unfortunately this year we added two more, right, to the WTA, so.

It'll be fun to see. Who were you surprised with? I don't want to get ahead. So if you have something else, go ahead. Who were you surprised with? I know you were there on site for a day or two. Who were you surprised with that exceeded your expectation and you weren't looking for them to do so? WTI.

Alvin Owusu (39:03.31)
No, no, go ahead.

Alvin Owusu (39:19.508)
on the WTA.

The first match that I saw, was Muhova versus Iyala. I was...

I was both shocked and disappointed at the one sidedness of that match. I think Mahova beat her like 0-1-1, something like that. And it was like, it was bad. Like it was bad. And with Alex, the ceiling is gonna come from her ability to dictate, right? Her ball is thin. Like as good as she does on the backhand side of taking the ball on the rise and trying to play close to the baseline there. That second serve is

that's candy corn and it's, and then the forehand's so thin, but yet she, especially with the crowd behind her, like it turns into a real vibe, which she, it lifts her as well. But Carolina, who also is known for getting herself into like, into long matches for no reason, I was shocked at how, how surgical she was with her. Like just dismissed her like it was a warmup. And so that was that.

took me a bit. I spent a lot of time, I think I bounced over and watched a men's match and then watched Andriyva versus Mboko. I wasn't so...

Alvin Owusu (40:53.614)
There's something interesting happening with Mira Andreeva right now as far as her perception, I think, amongst fans. And this is like, well, she was this bright-eyed kind of darling of the tour for the last two years. Quirky girl, always smiling, always great for a great one-liner in an interview. know, her little crush on Andy Murray. All these things like that made people like her.

Torrey Hawkins (41:01.26)
Okay, which is?

Alvin Owusu (41:23.226)
But after she went off on that lady or after her exit to Indian Wells caught a lot of fire, I was sitting with some older ladies who were kind of on her ass. Like, oh, her attitude sucks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. it's like, wow. And these ladies play tennis. They used to go to keep a skein. Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (41:27.714)
Well.

Torrey Hawkins (41:48.621)
Old school. Lipton.

Alvin Owusu (41:52.41)
One lady's like, yeah, tennis channel on all day long. People always say, you come to my house, there's a TV on, it's got tennis channel on, mad respect. But the perception of her is starting to get a little iffy and then you see her in Conchita, I wonder how long we've got on that one. The one that got you there might not be the one that gets you across the finish line, you know what I mean? So that might be going, I'll get to that with Ega and Amanda in a minute. So yeah, that one was a little, that one was.

a little, huh. And then also, there's starting to be this like, every player who has the ability to get over the finish line and not just win tournaments but win Grand Slams, win the big ones, they've all got this certain X factor about them. Like last year, feel like Mira came out, looked like a different player, much stronger, serving bigger, and was able to pick up.

Two Masters, One Thousand is back to back. I think it was Dubai and Indian Wells, right, if I'm right? I think that's correct. She is kind of, I don't know, that hasn't been there. Maybe that was an anomaly. Maybe that was not her true top end. Maybe that was just a good few weeks, whatever. But I haven't seen that since. I haven't seen anything special from her. Especially when you watch her in Boko play, there's a lot of similarities there, except for.

Torrey Hawkins (42:53.368)
I'm going to.

Alvin Owusu (43:17.145)
M book has got a little bit of another gear, a little bit of a gear, one gear. And that's, that's the difference between what I think is going to be like.

Torrey Hawkins (43:19.63)
One more gear, 100%. She's like my motorcycle, got six gears, not five. You know what I mean? That extra gear is all that. I don't think she's gotten worse. I think the rest of the top end have caught her and they've now asserted themselves. think Mira needs to.

Alvin Owusu (43:28.961)
Right, exactly.

Alvin Owusu (43:41.913)
And she's not that fast either. That's the other one. Like her foot speed is like, foot speed.

Torrey Hawkins (43:45.566)
Which is why she always went heavier, thought, to her credit. When I watched the match with her and Boko and yeah, you were courtside, I was watching from TV. It might have been better, yeah. Yeah, but you're seeing the quality of the ball. I'm watching trajectory and tactics better. You're watching and hearing and seeing, courtside to me is always a better version of who's ball's bigger.

Alvin Owusu (43:54.074)
Your your your vantage point might have been better than mine. I don't like watching I was literally on the sideline though, and I hate you It's not a good. It's not a good look Sure

Torrey Hawkins (44:13.486)
struggling a little more. When you're watching TV, you have a great view. It's like watching a real good, anything in person. You pick up a little more of the granular, you know what I mean, as opposed to the overview. I felt she was making a point to say, I might lose this match. I think it was eight versus nine. Weren't they like eight, nine seed or whatever? I'm going to out hit you. I am going to see if.

Alvin Owusu (44:34.167)
Yeah. Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (44:41.07)
Everybody talks about your balls being on fast charge. I have never seen Mary hit the ball that flat and that big until that match. I've seen her win a bunch of matches. I've seen her roll. I've seen her defend almost too much. And I'll be honest, part of me was kind of like, huh, wrong person to try it on. But like that you can do it. I like the fact that this is almost personal to you, that you wanted to prove to yourself that you could out hit her.

Alvin Owusu (44:58.517)
Hahaha

Torrey Hawkins (45:10.018)
And she did it on multiple occasions. She didn't do it well. She erred out, erred, I should say out a few times, more times than she normally would. But I felt like it was her own, I need to hit the ball. That's what the top five are doing. And I have to say to some degree, I kind of agree with her because I feel like she's at a point where she needs to have that extra gear.

And if all she does is keep rolling and she's not that fast, she's gonna get caught being that counter puncher, can't counter punch, she ain't fast enough. And she now has to decide, do I get faster or do I get my ball bigger? I think we both know you can't get faster overnight, but you could in fact hit the ball bigger, but you should get a good ball. So I was actually pleased to see her tactic change, albeit in a losing effort. So that was what I was saying. And I thought it was...

Alvin Owusu (45:50.4)
Hehehehe

Torrey Hawkins (46:03.586)
I thought it was pretty good, know, ball striking wise was pretty, pretty fun to see, you know, as much as, as I say, as it kind of matched up in Dimboco's hands. But yeah, that was, that was my question. was wanting, I wanted to know when you, when you were there, who you saw and who kind of, who kind of surprised you a little bit, who did it for me was Belinda Bench. I felt like this tournament, her again, I saw her play that good match against, against Amanda. She's just, I was in my mind. She was one, I was kind of moving.

Not necessarily out to pasture, but that certainly didn't think she would be, you know, top eight, top 10 per se, but she's showing me, buddy, I still have it. My gold medal in my trophy case is not, was not by, by mistake. And her serve looks better. Her, a lot of parts of her game, her much like a Svitolina, she's just showing you that buddy experience still counts for a lot. And I can still do what I can do with the best of them.

Alvin Owusu (46:57.407)
Yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (47:02.11)
and don't sleep on me. And I was really impressed with that.

Alvin Owusu (47:04.119)
And it feels like, mean, Belinda's another one that's been around for a long, long time. And even being off tour for a year and some change with having her daughter, I think she had a girl, I'm pretty sure she had a girl. She's only 29. And I say that to say like, Irina's 28, Jessica's 32. So like, she's got some time. And she's playing at a solidly out of 10 in the world kind of level.

Torrey Hawkins (47:24.696)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (47:28.482)
for sure.

Alvin Owusu (47:33.76)
If she's got everything else is calm in her life and she's just kind of focused on this and then, and being a mom, similar to Svetlana, like you're seeing, I mean, maybe some of the anxiety about being a professional tennis player and maybe having kids now that you've had one in your back, that's, that's settled. Yeah, it's settled. so now you can go forth and exactly. yeah, Belinda, I was, you know, similar to some others and very different to yourself. Like,

Torrey Hawkins (47:49.23)
It's now settled,

Alvin Owusu (48:02.583)
Last year I was like, it's kind of a, this could be a one and done kind of situation. But no, she looks solid. She's beating good players. She is showing that I, yeah, yeah, yeah, beating them, beating them. Another woman that impressed me, so in the night session, a good friend of mine was able to hook us up with some corporate seats. So I got a very, very good look at Mr. Yannick's Center. I'm talking.

Torrey Hawkins (48:11.907)
Not just letting them be.

Alvin Owusu (48:30.443)
six rows back in the corner, my friend, off court level. That was, we'll get to that another time. But after him, Elena, say what? Maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, I'll change shirts. But after him was Rebecca against Talia Gibson. Now, Rebecca, I've happened to see Rebecca a lot in the last few months. So that's fine, that's well-worn. Everything I said about her coming out of DC when I watched her from her coach's box.

Torrey Hawkins (48:30.766)
Yeah, I'll do it for you. Yeah. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow after that final.

Alvin Owusu (48:59.757)
That's still the same. She beat Talia, I think, like two and two. But Talia, she's 21 years old, out Australia. No, no, no, that's happening. That is going to happen.

Torrey Hawkins (49:06.542)
That could be good. She looks like the next player to break inside the top 10 through 20 or 10 through 15 with like with the quickness. I saw everything she's doing. Didn't she beat Jovich? Wasn't that the win she had before? Who did she beat before that? I'm pretty sure.

Alvin Owusu (49:19.288)
When you-

Alvin Owusu (49:24.569)
Who did Talia beat? Yeah, when you see her, you're like, that's a real professional. Like, she is, that's a big, strong woman. I'll tell you Talia. She did beat Jovich. I'll have to get that to you in a second. I'll take look at it here.

Torrey Hawkins (49:48.6)
Yeah, okay. I thought it was a good match. And I was so impressed with how, cause you always hit the pretty clean ball. And she just, I haven't seen a player remind me of Kim Kleister's since Kim Kleister's. And she reminded me of a little bit of Kim with a little bit of, not so much Barty, but a lot of Kim just didn't have the splits and the other, you know, the crazy on the runs. But Kim, as those of us who remember Ms. Kleister's,

Alvin Owusu (49:54.733)
She does.

Torrey Hawkins (50:18.22)
hit a great ball off both sides. She could roll, she could drive. But when she got into her groove and started kind of hitting two or three bangs, she could go cross, cross, line off either side, but did it with mobility where Babs does a nice job of, Krijikova does a nice job of doing it, but she's not as fast. Kleister's was faster. And that's what Talia looked like to me. She looked like a, not like a Talia, sorry. Talia looked very, very, I'm gonna say Kleister-esque. Again, she has to...

Alvin Owusu (50:40.888)
You nailed it.

Torrey Hawkins (50:47.574)
earn that comparison to your point rare air, but that's what she looked like when I saw her spurs. like, ooh, this is not even hard for her. This is kind of normal. She wasn't phased. So I was actually impressed that Rebecca, of course, Rebecca covers the court better than most. So when I saw those scores, was like, ooh, I thought it'd be a little closer. But again, there's the Rebecca of things, right? She is six feet tall and moves like an absolute, like a Porsche Carrera GT4. I she just,

Alvin Owusu (50:58.71)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (51:17.44)
She just covers court so well for lady that has those kind of levers and those kind of limbs. So anyway, I said to say, I saw her, I said, that girl's gonna be good. She was my, kind of my, my wow. I'd never heard of her, you know, save for her name in a few tournaments. And when I finally got a chance to watch her, I was impressed.

Alvin Owusu (51:24.152)
Well, that's.

Alvin Owusu (51:37.347)
So I'm glad you mentioned Kim Kleister's because if you take away what we know about Kim Kleister's career, I'm gonna go ahead and say she is a more athletic version of, let's say, like Linda Nosková. She moves, very, very similar players and I think what she saw against Rebecca was that Talia ran out of steam, right? She went through qualifying at Indian Wells, right, and then qualified and then beat Alexandra Drova.

Torrey Hawkins (51:52.364)
Okay, fair.

Alvin Owusu (52:06.422)
She beat Towson, she beat Paulini, and then lost to Noskov in the quarterfinals in three sets, right? So again, but she had to qualify. Same thing because of the, so she made the quarterfinals, but the cutoff, again, she had to qualify for Miami. So she qualified for Miami, and then.

Torrey Hawkins (52:13.902)
Okay.

Torrey Hawkins (52:21.134)
And Miami's got like a four five round quality. mean, the Miami quality. Right.

Alvin Owusu (52:24.288)
Yeah, she had to do the work, right? She had to do the work, but then again, she also won three rounds after that. So I think she just kinda hit the wall a little bit, but when I watched the first set and then went out to another match and I was like, she's probably gonna lose this match, but it's not because she can't hang. She's right there. Like she looks like she belongs here just a little bit at a gas, but yeah, that was a.

Torrey Hawkins (52:50.809)
After six, seven matches that happens, you know what I mean? Yeah, good for her. And again, Alvin, we're talking about there's more people moving in. At some point there's going to be 20 top 20 and we're talking about more players moving in. I'm telling you, it is a great time to be a tennis fan with the current WTA. You know what I mean? And I just feel like it's really, you know, it's.

Alvin Owusu (52:53.112)
Yeah, two tournaments in a row. Yeah, that's a lot.

Torrey Hawkins (53:17.032)
There's so much depth. There's so much parody in the various styles and so many new faces. So many very good current faces, know, former I'm gonna say, I don't wanna put them out to pasture, former faces, current faces and new faces. It's a really good time. There's legit, there's legit. If you and I really went through the numbers, there are 30 legit top 20s right now. If you had to go through.

Alvin Owusu (53:45.602)
Probably, yeah, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (53:46.606)
And I would say that I'm teetering on 32, but my point being that are legit either have been or were and I don't want to I'm I'm spitting ball in the number of the specifics, but there are 32 top 20s within the last 18 months that have been at those numbers that are there I'm not talking about a player that hit top, you know 11 or 12 and hasn't been heard from in the last year year and a half I'm talking about they are

Legit they were there and they're now unfortunate due to points and maybe an injury or two still got players like Kane Wynn, Kane Wynn that are still not 100 % back all over, they're still getting their matches back. There are at least 30 of that top 20 which makes that top 10 even harder, which makes those matchups going up. mean, Alvin, still got players, Noskov is no slouch, Claretallis is no slouch, Marta Kostik is no slouch. I you got these players that still, that are still

Alvin Owusu (54:40.436)
Right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (54:42.862)
That's your early match. That's your second, third round of a 1000. That's not an easy match. Vicky Mboko is now becoming that new top 10. But you still got people on the free. You still gotta get through Alex, what's my girl's name? You said earlier, Alexandra. Who's, and her and who's the other one that was kind of in that same kind of.

Alvin Owusu (55:03.682)
Alexandra.

Torrey Hawkins (55:12.11)
kind of a quiet top 10. She's in that, I forget her name, she's in that same spot that she's there. She hasn't had a ton of huge wins, but she's always relevant in your quarters and round of 16s of some of these tournaments. Her name will come to me. That's your level that's still there. And that's my point. we still got my girl, my girl Lefty, tattoos, that's been out, been injured for a little bit, won the French.

Alvin Owusu (55:42.122)
check, Vondrsilva.

Torrey Hawkins (55:45.676)
Vajsova, that haven't even come back full on yet. I I'm just telling you, there's so many good players, personalities. This is gonna be a heck of a season. Gonna be a heck of a season.

Alvin Owusu (55:55.938)
Let me ask you one more thing here before we get out of here. We've had three in the middle, relatively not middle of the season, but like we're in the season, right? We've had three players on the women's side who have parted ways with their coaches fairly recently. Emma Radikanu and Francisco Royeg split. Wim Thasett and Iga split. And then I think it was today or yesterday, Anna Smova and...

Torrey Hawkins (56:11.694)
Yeah, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (56:25.388)
Rick Vlisshout, yeah, I'm gonna all hack his names. I'm not gonna disrespect him like that. Splaying ways less than a quarter, right at a quarter way through the season, right? So obviously, we don't know what happened with the Anisoma thing. That could be maybe she hasn't had the first few months that she intended on. Maybe it was in reaction to something else. You're already seeing like,

Torrey Hawkins (56:26.798)
or he's whatever, I don't say it's.

Alvin Owusu (56:54.102)
some possible quick pairings of like, okay, Ega just split with Wim and she's training at Nadal's Academy in Spain, getting ready for the clay court season. Does someone like Roy make sense right away? Like maybe so, okay, fine. Helping her take a different direction in her tennis right now. Radikano, don't really know where she's going and it's not really a conversation for today.

Torrey Hawkins (57:15.0)
No.

Torrey Hawkins (57:21.24)
Put that out. That's an outlier.

Alvin Owusu (57:23.532)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Amanda splitting with Rick. My question to you is, when we're making these coaching adjustments or switches in flight here, right? We don't have an off season. We've got like a week to get ready for clay court. Because Charleston is, I fly out on Tuesday. It's next week. And then the men are starting, obviously, the week after that.

from a coaches standpoint, when you get a new player really in flight in the middle of the season, similar to Coco and Brad just a couple years ago when they joined up beginning of the hard court season and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you're a champion. What can you do, what can you not do when we've got tournaments coming up five, 10 days after you're joining with a new player?

Torrey Hawkins (58:15.726)
I'm gonna come at this and I'll try to be brief. I'm gonna come at this from two standpoints. Number one, from the coach. The coach has to have a pretty much surefire way of being an expert on X reason why you're getting him or her. clay court season. This person was a clay court expert. This person was a phenomenal mover. This person was great tactically at handling certain types of players. Boom.

The coach.

The coach is just the personality fit you need right now. And that was more the Brad Gilbert and Coco thing at that point in time to get her, which I thought he did a great job with her and Andy when Andy was coming over the hump and getting, and he split with Tariq Benabilis, who was his coach for a long time, through juniors and got him to the pros. Brad got him over that hump. That was a tactics mindset. That was a mindset of getting a person to really kind of understand the

the Grand Slam top five of things, top 10 of things, which Tariq was not. Now I say that to say that's on the coaching side. Personality, great with tactics and a certain surface. Clearly if I wanted to do well at Wimbledon, I would probably get somebody who is English or South African who loved volley, came in a lot, was a great double special or at some point.

You know somebody other somebody just a few pegs below Tim Hedman himself, right? at my point and to the point where that's because that's what I'm looking to do That's a that's a matchup is gonna work for me and they are very good at it. I take and trust their judgment So those are the things to me on the coaching side and obviously they have to be available, right? on the player side I Have to know myself Alvin at that point it and I can't I can't overstate that you have to know what you need

Torrey Hawkins (01:00:12.842)
Every player has a developmental plan. It happens as they were 10, 12, 13 years old with any level of coaching. And they still have to know where their needs are. You have to be very realistic with this. You cannot assume, right? A man had a phenomenal year last year, phenomenal. She can't assume that she's in the best shape possible to maintain such a run all year long, right? The year's gonna take its turn. She's gonna have to get somebody who is going to push her differently, who her, who their voice is gonna continue to.

push them and motivate them. And maybe there's a comfortability issue with Rick, or maybe there's a comfortability and they're just, know, maybe that's the problem, right? You've gotta continue to have someone to push you to your next level. And sometimes that change is a good thing. But the player has to know that the player coming in, okay? I always use my favorite example with Fed picking up.

Mo, excuse me, I'm forgetting his name. Lubitschich, thank you. With the, Yvonne. It was a tactical decision to get a guy that came over his backhand all the time. He didn't get a two-hander. He didn't get a lefty. He got a righty, one-hander with a big serve and a big return who was good coming over the top of return. And what did Lubitschich do? He helped Thad come over the top of that darn ball.

Alvin Owusu (01:01:09.877)
Lubachitch.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:35.712)
and made him hit out on that ball every fricking time. And that's why he was relevant there on his last couple of slams, even though he was getting near the end and had so much success with the slice. So that to me is another one where Fed did everything else pretty well. But I think we all can, I think that stands out. So now you're tweaking small things. You're tweaking very small things to make sure that you are trying to get this, that and the third with your game. And I think that's what these players are showing.

Alvin Owusu (01:01:52.609)
He did all right, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:02:03.758)
I don't really count Emma. She's changed coaches too many times. She's changed coaches like her. Like somebody's changed outfits going on a party dress. She's lost as far as I'm concerned. And I love her as a player. She's still trying to find, you know, Nirvana that she had five years ago, her and Layla are still trying to find that level of success. And they just have to both understand the moon, the stars, the sun aligned and it happened. But don't put yourself up there at that level. That's not where you are.

Alvin Owusu (01:02:06.881)
Sure. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:02:33.582)
put her off to the side. But for Ega, I think it's important. I think for Amanda, it's important for the now we've got a round two, year two, the reprise. I think for, and I think for who's the only, you just mentioned that that's looking at a change. And let me say this before we move on. Coco's now seeing, it's been almost six months since US Open. She's just now seeing that jello effect I was talking about.

her tactical, her technical changes, right, are starting to now set. The serve is looking better, the foreign is looking better. And I think that's important to understand that if you're trying to make these kind of changes in your game, you know, you gotta give the coach enough time to let some of these things actually change. And I think that's the other thing that needs to happen. You gotta know what you need, you gotta know you're looking for, but you also have to let those changes take place.

And while there's a short-term fix on that season with that coach, there's also, and I want to be this much better next year, and I want to be that much better the following year, I don't want this, we can't get into a point where the coach is expected to take you from 20 to two by next week. I mean, that's just, this ain't Chick-fil-A.

Alvin Owusu (01:03:51.415)
Yeah, yeah, it's just interesting because usually you see coaching changes happen in the off season, right? It's almost a merry-go-round of, or what's that other term? I forget the term, but it doesn't matter what the term is. People are, F1 calls it silly season, right? Where someone's changing seats and someone's shopping in that seat. It all happens around that time. Yeah, yeah, happening here as we switch into the clay court.

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:04.43)
Yeah, involving door.

Right.

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:12.891)
Yeah, jump seat.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:18.9)
It's interesting. still, I'm saying it right now. Anyone who wants to sell their EGA, Sioux-At-Tec stock, holler at me, because I'm buying. I'm buying. I'm buying. She's still 24 years old. And she's won a Grand Slam last year, and she has six to her name. She's won away from the career slam. Let's not act like she's a joke or something. She's still got it. She's lost it. She's lost it, right? And I think...

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:27.086)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (01:04:42.926)
100%.

Alvin Owusu (01:04:48.49)
finding the right coach to help her find the best version of herself, which is marrying what she used to do really well to what today's game requires of her in a space that she feels comfortable doing it in. I think that's probably what she's looking for and we'll see who that ends up being.

Torrey Hawkins (01:05:08.514)
That's the point I pushed back briefly. The game has changed. You got her big hitters. You got the Valkyrie coming in now. It's nothing about her like Hingis years ago. The game has simply gotten more physical. She's still that ego. The problem is she's not having those same results and she now has to upgrade. The V6 or the little four banger she had in there has now got to become a V6 with HP engine. She's got to get more juice off the serve, Alvin.

Alvin Owusu (01:05:12.971)
Sure.

Torrey Hawkins (01:05:37.514)
and look to first strike. But that doesn't mean that what she's been doing before was wrong. Lost it to me, I'm gonna push back on that because I think that's actually the wrong term. However, I know what you mean. They simply, you're playing against girls, the average height is three to five inches taller. The ball speed is 10 to 15 miles an hour faster and they're on the rise and they return as good as she does and they serve bigger. So where is her special? It's now average. It's not because she's gotten less.

They've added more. And I think that's the key. I think you're dead right on everything else. I just want to make sure. And this outside of Raticano, everybody else has to understand, look, we're just playing by stricter standards now. We just have to raise it up a lot. And I'm trying to be that level, right? I'm trying to do more than I can do. We saw it with JPEG last year, changing coaches with Merklin and I forget the other Mark. And we saw it with Francis.

Alvin Owusu (01:06:30.772)
Nulls, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:06:31.758)
Mark knows, right? You got it now with Francis. And he did the thing. Francis was in the semifinals at US Open two years ago. He wants to make a push. I need somebody to help push me in that direction. Francis doesn't play any different. He's a little bit more physically fit. Had a great match with Hootie. Hootie played this past week. But didn't he have a solid three setter with...

Alvin Owusu (01:06:55.304)
Yeah, I'm blanking and I was there for the majority of it too. God bless it.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:00.046)
It wasn't good. Anyway, we'll talk about tomorrow. But my point is that they're making these changes to get back an edge that they they then they don't have now. Maybe it's fitness, maybe it's a shot, maybe it's just a tactic. But same thing, can the coach provide it? Can the coach speak to them in a way that gets them, that kind of really speaks to where they are right now?

Alvin Owusu (01:07:02.006)
it'll come to me later.

Torrey Hawkins (01:07:26.318)
and can the player really dial into what it is they're putting down? And can the player who knows themselves, this is what I need. What I don't like, and this is where I reference Emma, she's looking at someone to provide an answer or get me back where I was. And I feel like that's not a true indication of where she is. Hitting bigger, Verada Cano, is a problem. Petschie said it a few times, you know, on numerous, I think he had been in a box several times. You don't.

If you don't possess that level of speed and you're not that level, height and athleticism of a player, how are you going to hit bigger? And now I think that was a tactical adjustment that was wrong for her. But at this point, she's grasping at straws. You got to know yourself. know, a man of Nessa Mova needs to continue to get in the most phenomenal shape, have the best recovery, have better margins. And she has to have the ability to have some level of a reset ball and not be so high risk, high reward and get her body where it can

handle the pounding that she's gonna have because she's a bit streaky. Egan's gotta get a serve, period of the story, and continue to make that be one of her main focus for the next several years going forward and so on and so on and so on. You can go down the list. Coco, serve is just not coming around. Finish the drill, one of your favorite things, and keep working on it. You're halfway there. You're not finished, right? JPEG, continue to try to find ways to come forward, continue to work on your fitness.

Ride out, you're 32, ride out on your terms and do your thing. But I feel like the problem is people are looking, you can't look at this like I'm chasing a result or I'm trying to get back where I was or I've lost it. No, the game has moved on and I have to move on to join it.

Alvin Owusu (01:09:05.354)
Well, can't, okay, I'm gonna re-push back. one, beat Minsik in that really, really good match. I watched the first two sets of that match and then shot over to catch up with Mickelson's match. But the difference between Francis and Ega is like Francis had a good run or two, Ega has won many Grand Slams. And when I say get back to where she is, it's not like.

Torrey Hawkins (01:09:10.456)
Well, men's sick. Great match, the way.

Alvin Owusu (01:09:34.503)
You said the game has caught up and passed her. I'm not even willing to say that because it's not like she's hitting her head on the ceiling. It's not like she's losing to her back in Sabalinka. She's losing to everyone else, right? Random losses to Maria Sakari in the year 2026. Like I know Maria's playing good ball right now, but that's like, that's not what we're, okay, fine, fine. That's fine. But I think that's the kind of stuff where,

Torrey Hawkins (01:09:54.604)
in the former top five. But just saying.

Alvin Owusu (01:10:01.71)
That's where we're having some concerns, right? Like lost to Paolini in the back end of last year at some point. Okay, but yeah, no. And then losing to Magnum Lynette. That's when we're starting to throw the flags, right? We're like, okay, fine. If we're lose to Anna Samova here and there, if we're gonna lose to Rebacna or Sabalinka, now you're raising the, you have a very good point. Like, okay, these are big hitters and that's what the game requires of me and I need to make some adjustments. Okay, that's fine.

when you're losing to Maria Zachary and as great as Alina Svitalina looks right now, like that's not the profile of player we're talking about. That's a different problem. That's a whole different problem, right? That's the problem she's having is the, lose a set and things go, I can't get it back together. Like when the first set,

Torrey Hawkins (01:10:46.158)
That's fair. That's fair.

Alvin Owusu (01:10:57.504)
get all in a mess in the second set and the match falls apart and that's what she's been speaking publicly about. She's out of confidence, kind of like roadblock right now and getting back to her old self that was more confident and if we net out at, okay, there are players that are just better than me, then that's fine. All I want a player to do is maximize their potential and I don't think that bumping into and losing to Alina Svetlana and then.

Following that up with losing the Magna Lynette. That's not a reflection of her skill level. That's a reflection of she's, she's, she is somewhere not positive right now. That.

Torrey Hawkins (01:11:32.238)
and heard and duly noted, it's the same reason why she's in that same spot. There's no way to upgrade.

what she does and why is she holding on getting a set lead and holding on for the win Alvin because there's no other weapon on her and she's trying to ride the match out off of momentum and off of who she is slash used to be. I don't disagree with you saying and we can even as we often do we can agree to disagree both things can be true at the same time.

Alvin Owusu (01:11:56.534)
That's That's fair.

Alvin Owusu (01:12:02.869)
I agree with you in that because I've talked about like if you can get through the first hour with Ega you got yourself into something but you better not be down a set and a break because then you're in some

Torrey Hawkins (01:12:10.7)
Right. And that to me is also Ega's bluff. Right. But why does she have to bluff, Alvin? I would tell you she's bluffed a half, a third of the time up to this point. She bluffs because she has to. And if she gets those things and now you can no longer bluff. The girls are too good. They will, and blood and the water are fair, but she's always done this. And she started off this Schneib losing to,

Alvin Owusu (01:12:23.391)
That's, that's...

Torrey Hawkins (01:12:40.43)
Arena in the semis of French. She had a gift win. You heard it right here on and in Wimbledon. We know that right because Amanda took out Arena and then we have Arena. Wasn't it? So my point is so now you're in this point where she didn't have the face Arena Arena at that tournament, right? Thank God she but I hope she sends her a nice nice Christmas gift. But my point being now we are in the thick of it and now she's dropped from that.

Alvin Owusu (01:12:45.705)
Yeah, yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:12:53.333)
Yeah, she'd be at Arena and the Semis, yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:13:08.878)
of two or three or whatever in the world. And now she's facing those same players sooner. And the other players are like, huh, don't sleep on me. The Magda Linets and obviously the Linas Van Linas because they're playing some good ball right now. And I'm telling you without that serve and without the bluff and without the mystique of Iga's Fiontec winning everything, Iga is now very human. And now because they're fighting like they know they can beat her. Alvin, we just saw number one in the world.

go down and was looking pretty good most of the tournament until one Peter Corder decided to push him to the third set and he faded. This game will tax you to the nth degree and I'm telling you, that showed me how close he was to losing to Fonseca, truth be told, which was the match before because of that same mystique and we're talking about Carlos. Six, seven slams. So I'm just saying.

Alvin Owusu (01:14:03.561)
Right. Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:14:06.222)
I'm a huge Eager fan. I have always been, I will continue to be. But we gotta understand, we gotta, if you're gonna be real, let's call it what a TI is. And you have gotta make a point to fix those things and get rid of the smoke and mirrors and start to tactically didact your game and get back where it needs to be if you're trying to return to that podium.

Alvin Owusu (01:14:29.248)
Fair enough, I can leave it at that. We'll come back tomorrow after the men's final. We'll do the same thing, kind of talk about the season. But I feel good about it, that was fun. I'm Alvin, that's Tory, best of three, we are out.