Jannik Sinner vs João Fonseca — and the Pressure on Carlos Alcaraz

Alvin Owusu (00:01.554)
And welcome to another edition of the best three podcast. I'm Alvin, that's Tori and we are, we're mid Indian Wells, but we got a lot of interesting things to talk about. little, little nerdy coach talk about some, about some things we've been seeing with our one and a half coaches. I, well, I guess, it'd be three Tori gets two full coaches. I get, get, I get the half, talk a little bit about, fun second versus center. That was a, that was a fun one for me personally. I know TH you've got some thoughts as well. And then

Torrey Hawkins (00:15.779)
Thank you.

Torrey Hawkins (00:27.802)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (00:28.47)
And then maybe we'll talk about old Chuckie Akaraj just a little bit amongst other things. But first and foremost, TH, how are you doing?

Torrey Hawkins (00:36.997)
I'm good. I'm good. I appreciate you asking. I'm well I am doing you know as well as I can be and and and I'm not sure what that is but I'm but I'm doing well enough and I appreciate you asking how about yourself sir?

Alvin Owusu (00:53.038)
I'm doing well, I'm doing well. And this kind of reminds me of that time of year, like the weather's starting to perk up here in the South. We're touching 80s. Pollen's coming as well. But that also means as we get towards the swimming break, we're hustling towards the back end of the school year, things are shifting. Just as you get settled into that first half of the year schedule, you know the change is coming. That happens in the tennis coaching world. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I think...

Torrey Hawkins (00:58.789)
Parlin's coming out.

Torrey Hawkins (01:15.821)
Time change everything.

Alvin Owusu (01:22.03)
I texted you earlier this week as I've been watching Indian Wells and it's been a fun event. It started a little slow and then caught like wildfire. But one kind of particular thing I wanted to talk to you about had to do with court positioning. And this is a broad term but very specific in the way that I mean it. I'm watching players whose

Torrey Hawkins (01:33.667)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (01:43.652)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (01:50.858)
sometimes technique, the way that they hold the racket, the way that they produce their strokes, the way that they try to execute game plans, sometimes does not match where they tend to stand behind the baseline. Someone who wants to, I'll give the kind of loose example, someone who wants to play flatter is probably going to hug the baseline a little bit more. You asked me this the other week when we were talking about strings, you were like, well, are you trying to take the ball on the rise?

Torrey Hawkins (02:07.845)
Thank you.

Alvin Owusu (02:19.95)
you're going to sit back a little bit and wait for it to drop. And my answer was like, well it kind of depends. But I thought about how serious of a question that is and how that, you know, how that gets reflected in how one's court position is a reflection of the way they play or should it be. What are kind of your initial thoughts with that one before we get into the specific players that we can kind of pressure test this one with?

Torrey Hawkins (02:37.475)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (02:43.909)
In my opinion Alvin, is the secret sauce of most players games that's never talked about enough. You've heard me talk about ad nauseum, foot speed and ball speed. If a person has enough foot speed to hit a certain ball at a certain pace comfortably.

and they can hit themselves they have enough speed to extend their coverage area of the return of their hard shot they are by definition able to play closer they are by definition able to hit little flatter, hit little bigger they can play more on the rise

and I'm talking everything from your Jazz and Paolini who could play a little heavier ball but can play a pretty good ball on the rise to your Sabalencas and Anisimovas that come through and flatten the ball out to your counterpunishers like Mboko and Koko that take the ball early and are really good on the move doing the same thing. However...

If you do not have that same set of skills, if you are not as fast, if your wind up is just a tad bit bigger to get that execution of the shot off, you gotta back up. If you by nature hit a heavier ball, you gotta back up. If you like a little more time to set up the shot, let the ball drop, be a little more open stance in nature, kinda load a little bit, go a little bigger.

You gotta back up. And that's not to say that you're not hitting the ball as big. You're probably hitting the ball little bigger, to be honest. But you're giving yourself a little more time. The problem with more time is you need to hit ball a little deeper, a little more penetration to the court. You can't now go for some of the same angles or you risk running yourself out of your coverage area. And I think a lot of players don't fully understand this. think a lot of coaches kind of make this grandiose statement of take the ball early, take the ball on the rise.

Torrey Hawkins (04:31.687)
play aggressive and while that all sounds well and good, you gotta be able to hit that shot consistently enough to make that work for you for it to be a shot for you. I used to always use the term when you were coaching with us when we were talking about when we had our academy that was called On the Rise. And that really got me thinking, that was 20 years ago, that got me thinking Alvin about should you take every ball on the rise? I mean we talk about it but it's really, a tactic in certain styles, it's a tactic

Alvin Owusu (04:49.611)
on the rise.

Torrey Hawkins (05:01.607)
If you have a certain skill set, it's not necessarily attacking for everybody. It's certainly not attacking all the time. So that's where I'm at with it. feel like, you I think you mentioned Sasha Zverev is a good example. Sasha Zverev's backhand is just as clean and it's almost technically solid as anything we've seen on the men's tour. There are better backhands. There have been better backhands on the tour, but his is right up there with him. You know what I mean? I think of players like David, now Bandy and Andre Agassi. There's been some phenomenal backhands we've seen and been blessed to watch.

But if it ain't top five, he's certainly top ten for the amount of work he's been able to do over his career. Backhand is just technically solid. He just does not break down. He almost always steps in with it. He has time to do so. But you ask yourself, well how is that possible? Because he's 6'6 and lanky and long. Well it's because he takes a bigger loop on that forehand and he literally rolls you to your backhand side hoping you come back to his backhand so he can step in and lean on you, hit that ball.

Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (06:01.869)
But I'll hold on, press right there. Also, where is he choosing to make contact with that ball? He's usually behind the baseline, which gives him all day to create that big, nice loop.

Torrey Hawkins (06:11.013)
Right.

Nice big loop and he's 6'6 so his strike zone is higher than most and his on the rise which is up into the strike zone not off the hop is taller than most. Him and Lerner 10 their strike zone might be a full racket length different you know what I mean in terms of what it is. I may be exaggerating a little bit but not much you know he's probably a full foot taller you know the Lerner so that being the case he's up his up to his shoulders a little that'd be over Lerner's shoulder just saying so I think that's one thing you have to understand and I

think it works for him. Is it ideal? Well, ideal is relative to function and it works for him and so therefore it's ideal for him and I think that's where you also have to come back to what do you like to do what do do more and as we get into the other side of that which is so what you're talking about now is the tactic and who can make it work, whose style and tactics it works best with. I want to add that the next Wrinkled album who you play it against what do they do?

What do they like doing in certain kind of things? I was watching Davidic Fokina play Lerner. Lerner loves that ball on the rise and Davidic Fokina likes to bang and let's go heavy and then bang. And buddy, that ball just sits up just right for Lerner. So that's a tough matchup because he may want that ball to be little heavier so he can get the step up. But Lerner's on the rise is so clean he doesn't get it as often as he wants. And you risk over hitting a little bit if you're Davidic Fokina or you let the Lerner's counter punish you as a result. just to give you an example,

that's it's so much of a what they call a three-dimensional chess it's so much of a three-dimensional chess piece that you just have to understand what you do well right how best you do it and against what type of player and I think if you can hit that you know so to speak holy trinity of things then you'll find out where your sweet spot is and what you do best with said ball

Alvin Owusu (08:03.589)
That's that's well put and I'll even go back to the maybe a couple rounds ago I'm not even sure what had happened, but I was watching emirate a canoe play right and she just she's going through another coaching change and She was you know moving away from a coach who wanted her to play with more shape and going back to Petsy who? Want who was I guess maybe willing to let her do whatever it is that she it's a good match. They work together Sorry, they've worked together a few times over the years and

So maybe what he's saying is what she wants to hear and it's going to work well, but the issue that I saw with Emma, and I see this a decent amount, I've seen it a decent amount on the women's side, a little less on the men's side, but a good amount on the women's side. Someone like Emma Radikanu wants to play on the front foot and wants to bang, right? She does not want to sit back and roll. Emma does, my first question goes, okay, does,

Torrey Hawkins (08:52.013)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (08:59.329)
Does Emma read well enough to take a ball on the rise? Emma actually, I feel like she reads pretty well. Ball comes off, ball comes off opponent's racket. She's very athletic, control of her body, times the split well, preps well. Mechanically, she is doing the things she needs to do to then play that close to the baseline and be aggressive there, okay?

Torrey Hawkins (09:05.477)
Right.

Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (09:21.125)
She's got one leg of the stool.

Alvin Owusu (09:24.833)
She's got one leg of the stool. I'm not sure if the stool has, the stool probably has three legs. Okay. I'm gonna be missing a third leg. But my second leg is when she actually gets in position to hit the shot, she just don't hit it big enough. She just does not produce enough pop to stand that close because what happens is now that ball's not coming off as thick as it needs to come off and she's out of position. Now she's a little bit, that's like if you come up inside the court.

take a return early, you don't tag it, you leave it middle, now you're having to return back, not just to neutral, but almost to a defensive position, you got a long way to go, right? So if you're gonna be on the gas, and on the baseline like that, you do need to be directing traffic with authority, and she lacks the authority to be in such a position to be directing said traffic. Give it back to me.

Torrey Hawkins (10:15.209)
I think the word you're looking for is control. If you are controlling the rally enough with your on the rise or at least your second, you have earned the right to be on the baseline. If you're simply taking it on the rise, that's in itself not good enough. Emma Ratakano's technique is as clean as I've seen on any player. Her technique is there, her footwork is there. I don't think her variety

is used near enough for the package she's bringing. Unlike a Jessica Pagula who's probably similar height and stature who tags the ball a bit more and is very comfortable tagging the ball shorter swings and can create a lot of pop with not much swing. I feel like

Alvin Owusu (11:04.193)
Yeah, not much swing.

Torrey Hawkins (11:05.601)
Emma has a little more of time swing, has a more of a, if you will, a little more take back, a little more of rhythm player. And against 50 and out, she's great because she has enough time, she can hit the ball, she goes through those steps out.

Defensive area behind the baseline the controlling area on top of the baseline the pressuring area just inside You know the that mid no man's land area the attack and obviously the finish sheet does all those things very very well But when you go up against you know the Valkyrie, know the Amazonians You know who are six-foot and some change that are bringing pace

You never get control. So if you're under, I don't even want to say underpowered, that's kind of a slap in the face a little bit, she's hitting the ball pretty big. She's former Grand Slam champion and she's whatever, 30, 20 in the world. She's a good player, very good player. She's just, maybe the term, I'm gonna, sounds weird, underlimbed. She doesn't have the leverage, right?

Alvin Owusu (12:05.26)
She doesn't have the leverage. She doesn't have the leverage.

Torrey Hawkins (12:07.013)
You know, I look at it as just leverage. She just doesn't have the limbs and the leverage to hit that same ball the same way. You know, and I think when she played Anissa Mova, Anissa Mova went through her pretty well. tactically was a bad tactic for Emma to try to out hit Anissa Mova. It's like, you're not faster. You're not hitting bigger. Your serve and plus one aren't gonna get her out of position. You're gonna attack her to her backhand. She loves her backhand.

You're gonna move her to a forehand, she moves okay for a tall six foot lady, and she tags the forehand when she gets it, and you don't have the speed or the power to back it up. What are you doing trying to out hit? Now.

And that was the second leg of the stool. When you go on the rise, are you comfortable enough at it that you're good enough to stay there? See, Alvin, we have to earn that position, right? It's no different in most things in tennis with position. If I'm playing doubles, Alvin, you're my partner, you're hitting the bomb serve, and I'm on top of the net, I'm draping myself on top of the net. I have to be able to earn that position to be up that close.

My hands aren't that good, my reads are bad, and I'm just about a second late. It feels like I'm watching bullets go by the net. I'm not able to even help you. I'm seeing the poach a second or two late. I gotta back up so can help you. If I'm seeing it as it's coming off, I'm taking the volley as the guy's finishing his, as he's going through his follow through. I'm already on it.

I'm an asset to you versus a liability. It's all different from the baseline. If I'm able to step in, connect, and get you off balance and return fire for the six or seven balls I need to to get you to back up or to roll, I'm comfortable there, right? And we saw that with Vicki and Volko against Anís Mova on the very opposite side of things. But if I am going on the rise as a tactic, I'm not as comfortable, I'm not hitting as big, I'm not hurting you, you mentioned earlier in defense, it's not because

Torrey Hawkins (14:06.061)
if anything other than she doesn't have time to stay in control. So I take a little time, I take a little time, I'm moving on the rise. The ball comes back at 90 miles an hour, a foot from the baseline.

I did not take away enough time from you and guess what? I ended up taking my time from myself. My next ball's a buggy, my next ball's a short hop pickup, and at that point, Alvin, you know, like I know, that ball landed short, it's sitting up, and the person that you thought you were attacking is now getting the short ball from you, from your poor on the rise bump. And let's face it, tables just turned. The tables turned quick. We haven't even got to who you're playing against yet, which is a three-a-bringer score. And if that person across the net is...

Alvin Owusu (14:45.16)
Right, Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (14:48.613)
six inches or so taller with limbs and can tag the ball within a foot or two of the baseline at 80 to 90 miles an hour? Alvin, you might be in trouble. You might be helping on the rise.

Alvin Owusu (14:59.22)
And you missed, you mentioned Jessica Pagulo there and I think she's a really, really good example of someone who, while she is not the most, you don't think of her as the most powerful player, but she can recruit power on her strokes in a very short cycle on both sides. that allows, exactly, so that allows her to then, okay, between bounce and.

Torrey Hawkins (15:19.595)
and very efficiently like that.

Alvin Owusu (15:26.124)
hit, if she doesn't have to create this huge take back to get 95 % of available pace to the ball, she can shorten it because her shorts are, they're economical, they're efficient, right? She can get 90 % pace out without giving up position and she's closer to you when she hits that ball, meaning she's, you now have less time to recover. It's all about, you know, we're managing time.

Torrey Hawkins (15:35.834)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (15:49.533)
We'll see you later.

Torrey Hawkins (15:55.629)
Man, and that Alvin is a $64,000 question. Managing time, you know makes Atlanta Rebacka a bit of a weird morph is that she has pretty big take backs. And yet she's still able to almost always go forward and hug baseline. She's one of those weird hybrids that has big swings. She just sees so early and moves pretty well. Again, also six feet.

Alvin Owusu (15:56.0)
We're managing time on both sides.

Alvin Owusu (16:08.543)
Right, right.

on the bass side.

Torrey Hawkins (16:22.147)
But she, it's probably why she goes cross court a lot to have that margin of error. But I say it also to say, pretty big take backs, pretty clean on the rise, and almost always steps in. Almost always. Which is almost unheard of when you're on top of the baseline like that. But I say it to say she's one of the only players I know that has a pretty big take back that defends and attacks with the same types of swings.

Coco does a nice job of having her take back. hits a nice swing. She hits a good ball. She can shorten when she needs to. JPEG, all the strokes are short. So it doesn't matter. She plays one way. She either redirects you or hits through you or whatever. Ostapenko, another one. Big back swings. She moves in when she needs to. Hits a big ball, but needs to manage her time well, and so on and so on. But Rabakin is one of those players. And you can really tell Anissa Mova struggles with this from time to time because her back swings are pretty big.

she's in control. Sabalink is the same. She just has a little bit shorter take back on the backhand when she needs to to be able to lean on it. She can flip buggy or do some things when she needs to but in general there are very few purists that can just hug baseline all the time, go big, go through you and do it very economically and very efficiently and that's what makes the baseline the who can do it not who wants to. Everybody wants to. Who can do it and the more often

Alvin Owusu (17:46.976)
Everybody wants to.

Torrey Hawkins (17:49.353)
and do it while still achieving control and still achieving depth where it's not hurting their time and they're not making a ton of errors. And on one end of that scale, you saw it happen with Denise and Mo with Vic and Boko, didn't have time, has to thread needles too fast with too much, with too little time or...

Again, you're seeing it with players that can go through you, that take that amount of time, that kind of swing to do the same thing. And they earn the position, Sabalinka's one of best at it. She will take that one or two on the rise early, and then that gives her the time she needs to go for the shots she wants. And then after she's weathered the storm, that barrage for three or four shots, now she has the ball. She wants, well, now it's Curtin's because she's pretty good at finishing off when she gets the right ball.

Alvin Owusu (18:32.437)
How much credence do you put into the idea of...

How valuable is fast twitch, having fast twitch, like, I know we're talking about fast twitch and slow twitch muscles, and I'm being very, very, very generic about it here, but like, your players who have the ability, you mentioned Rebecca, like, it's amazing that she does it foot on the gas, oftentimes with a close stance on the forehand side, Because when the ball's coming that fast, the thing that most people will do, I think Carlos is a fantastic example of it, right? Go semi open, you watch him hit forehands, he's just like, I'm going semi, I'm,

Torrey Hawkins (18:56.559)
Move fast.

Alvin Owusu (19:06.901)
taking that piece of the pattern out, load, hip, boom, boom, boom. It's quick, right? So.

Torrey Hawkins (19:12.473)
He doesn't need the backhand too, Alvin. Carlos is the most ambidextrous of stances I've seen in a long time. He goes big off both open stances. mean, he'll crank backhand on you big, line across. He'll go front on you big, line across. He'll step in and tag. I mean, he is so comfortable going from squared to open to closed. I mean, he doesn't care. He's just that on balance. To your point, how much credence do I give to it? Not really.

not much. I think it's what a player has what they're comfortable with. I think it's more of their comfortability with time. I would or lack thereof and how well you are with or without it. Vicky Mboko might be one of the fastest players I've seen in a on the run high tempo rally who's under control. Who's hitting the ball big. She doesn't have to slow it down.

Alvin Owusu (19:51.389)
lack thereof.

Torrey Hawkins (20:08.773)
You don't see many can open from her. You don't see many. When you see a can open from Vicky and Boko, you've done something. Because you must have her outside the alleys, right? You have her literally in the alleys. Coco is very fast as well. She may roll one, she may bang one, she may have a can opener. she's doing it very fast, by the way. Vicky might be just a hair faster. Because she's getting over there hitting it in stride, going open stance, and actually banging the ball. Not rolling, not slicing, not defending. OK?

She's got as much fast, which is anybody I've seen out there, right? Now, who are the biggest players in the game though? I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I think Irina Sabalenka is gonna run the fastest 40 in other women's tour, but it ain't really hurting her whole lot. I think Iga Sviatnick is a beautiful on the rise ball striker. don't know if I'd put her on the old school Nike Spark.

Alvin Owusu (21:00.959)
Well, yeah, less fast switch in the meeting that we're accustomed to using, which is like being able to sprint, but like, can you get that?

Torrey Hawkins (21:06.021)
I was getting at speed and fast twitch and the ability to load reloaded gop. I'm only saying that I think some of these players level of midichlorians, I'm gonna use the stalwart's term, of handling time is phenomenally better than some. And now we're getting to a level in the women's tour especially where they just eight of the top ten give or take, maybe seven.

12 of the top 20 and maybe 30 of the top 60 have the ability to handle not much time very, very well. Whether they're giving it, in terms of giving the pace, receiving it, redirecting it, or just really good at handling yours and hurting you with it. And either of those, and the best players do a little bit of all three, right? So I think the men is very different. I think all the guys are pretty good athletes. I mean, I think all of them are.

That's almost a problem. They're all so darn good. Now who can hit it that big and that clean in that amount of time?

Alvin Owusu (22:07.999)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (22:12.517)
dictate. Now that's where Alcara's is to me on a whole nother level because he's on the run and in control. He's on the move and in control. He's on the standstill and in control. know and guess what he does more than any of them. He rolls more. He slices more and then he'll jack pace on you on two balls later just when you thought you had him hurt. Alvin he will crank a foreign batch at 95 hard down the middle like okay now handle that and if you run me I got you again and I think that's the difference where the where I think it's

It's a little bit more of a time race on the women's tour. I think on the men's tour, man, it's buddy, you better have it all. You better have it all.

Alvin Owusu (22:52.907)
Yeah, yeah. Well that was fun, that was fun. I feel like we could do probably another 45 minutes on this one, but we're not going to. We're not going to. We're gonna switch gears here and talk about last night's match. We're recording this the day after Sinner took out Fonseca 6-6, whatever, round of 16. I don't know what round we're in. I'm just kind of here for the vibes, man.

Torrey Hawkins (22:58.956)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (23:18.711)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (23:20.971)
Yal Fonseca played that match, he's been playing this tournament, he's had a little chip on his shoulder as in people have been chirping, one half of this podcast included, what me, that maybe there was a little too much was given, not enough earned. I say I saw what I needed to see last night and we're good, we're good.

Torrey Hawkins (23:33.251)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (23:51.157)
I was really excited. One match, like even before we got on here, one match does not make a championship nor does it make a career, right? And he, let's be first and foremost, he lost the match. He did not win the match. He did lose the match. Forth round, yep. But he did show at age, all of age 19 that the best player in the world, one of the best players in the world, cannot go through him. He...

Torrey Hawkins (24:00.505)
Sure. What's that? Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (24:19.669)
presented himself in that situation in a way that said, I am not like the rest of them. I am more like these guys than I am like those guys. You can't push me around. I can push you around. I'm not gonna get blanked out here like this is some first round French Open match. I can bring heat. I can trade lightsabers with the best of them.

Torrey Hawkins (24:38.596)
Right.

Torrey Hawkins (24:47.033)
Sure, sure.

Alvin Owusu (24:48.651)
And that was the big takeaway from that match for me in terms of the upside of Mr. Fonseca. Now, in terms of the downside, he had some chances. He let some chances go. You come at the king, you bet not miss, right? It's a game of margins, especially at the rarefied air of the top. Six and six looks like a close match. Yeah, we were in tiebreakers, but.

Torrey Hawkins (24:57.658)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (25:02.989)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (25:17.941)
when the chips were down, Mr. Center showed why he is, you know, four time Grand Slam champion, know, two in the world, so on and so forth. Before we get into like kind of the nitty gritty of what I think I saw, what was your feel coming out, during coming out of that match?

Torrey Hawkins (25:21.711)
to the world.

Torrey Hawkins (25:34.221)
Yeah, yeah, before I go there, I wanna know what impressed you with Yao. Besides it being close, because I close to me is relative. However, I was impressed that he kept it as close. I'm curious what you were impressed by. I know what I was impressed by, but go ahead, I don't wanna see your thoughts.

Alvin Owusu (25:54.761)
The score was irrelevant to me. He had an opportunity to serve out the first set, and the breaker, whatever, he didn't win it. If Yannick had held at five, three in the second set when he was serving it out, and we ended up six and three, I feel no different. Because I'd already seen what I needed to see. What I saw was a young player who was able to dictate on his terms under extreme firepower.

and even up the ante a little bit on that firepower. Not to steal your thunder, because I feel the same way that you feel about it. He was able to dictate off the backhand side from behind the baseline. Almost a layover back in the ish. You don't see players find that kind of angle off that hard hit of a ball from that far behind the baseline. I was...

I mean, I saw it last year in the indoor season and I was like, God bless that. I even told Travis, I'm like, that backhand is as clean as Christmas. I know we talk about how hard he hits it and how much fun he is, but that backhand is big, big time big. And I think that was probably the biggest takeaway for me was he did not allow Yannick Center to do the things to him that Yannick does to everyone else. He put Yannick on the back foot a little bit.

Torrey Hawkins (27:16.069)
and I can do anything else. Sure.

Torrey Hawkins (27:20.666)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (27:21.224)
he made Yannick go into B game a little bit, find some shape, squeeze around the margins a little bit to get just enough to give himself an opportunity to win both of those sets. That's what I was impressed by.

Torrey Hawkins (27:23.557)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (27:32.693)
I think that's well said. think, I'm gonna add to it, you have a consummate counter-punisher in Yannick Center. His 10,000 hours, to borrow the old term, which I don't believe, but let's just call it 10,000 hours, he spent the majority of his 10,000 hours being on the move, countering and then punishing.

Alvin Owusu (27:52.564)
Let's use it.

Torrey Hawkins (28:01.273)
He has not spent 10,000 hours attacking and finishing. As a result, the match that I saw was more about him trying to use that style. You call it a B game. I think that's his B game, in my opinion. It's dictating play coming forward, beating the person. What I was so impressed with, and I didn't know that he had it as well as he did, was that Yao's B game was I can counter also.

I have a good enough backhand to counter also. I knew he was fast, but I thought he was fast in a run around and hit too many forehands fast. can cover my on the run forehand, AKA James Blake speed because I'm really protecting my backhand more than I saw him. I have a backhand.

And then I saw I've got a very good backhand. then I'm what the heck have you been doing not hitting that backhand this whole time? All the talk show. I had the same conversation about Joe Willey's song years ago when I saw him play at the Junior US Open one year. I didn't see Joe Willey hit a backhand for four matches. I thought it was a one-handed.

Alvin Owusu (28:51.028)
Yeah, right.

Torrey Hawkins (29:09.719)
And then in the I saw him in slices and running around and big boy hands. And then I saw him in a match going back and back. I'm like, what? He's a two-hander. It blew me away. I thought maybe he changed the backhand. I said, he finally needed one. He finally needed one when he got to the pros. Anyway, I said to say, I was so impressed with not only that his style, he could change his style and not be the aggressor all the time, not be the one taking all the risk all the time.

Alvin Owusu (29:10.388)
So did he.

Alvin Owusu (29:21.066)
He probably did. Joe Willie probably did.

Torrey Hawkins (29:39.321)
He made more first serves, Alvin. He took his time. He worked himself to the point. And I felt like he went to the limit of the threshold of Yannick's offense. And by offense, mean trying to dictate, trying to pressure, trying to attack, trying to finish. And with that said, Yannick needs to get better at that. I thought he did a nice job doing that in this match, and especially in the breakers. He did a great job of that in the breakers, which told me Yannick actually got better in that match. But the flip side of that is what I was impressed with.

was Yao's backhand, Yao's steadiness. And you know how hard it is to go from on the move three times to stepping in and cracking the ball clean to hitting two more step-ins, to hitting one more open stance, to hitting another step-in, to running down a drop shot and playing the perfect kind of shot, be it lob, be it down the line.

You are in so many different emotional swings, let alone tactical shots and position of court. He did it repeatedly, which let me know that he was not.

He wasn't in over his head per se. Now while I thought it played pretty darn well for him, I thought it wasn't like, you mentioned the word in the text to me, it feels sustainable to me. And I'm not sure if that level is sustainable to him all the time, but it certainly showed me what his high side is, and he looked very comfortable doing it.

Alvin Owusu (30:51.988)
Mm-hmm.

Torrey Hawkins (31:01.893)
I like for it be sustainable. I get your point and that's my point. It didn't look like he was just playing out of his mind. That was what you meant. I think that I was really impressed to see him comfortable enough to let Yannick attack him knowing that he could handle the barrage when it happened.

Alvin Owusu (31:12.286)
Right.

Alvin Owusu (31:24.808)
And I use the term sustainable to even juxtapose it against like Jakub Mincek in Miami last year. Like you can't serve that well all the time. And we see why he's winning those matches because of that big serve, but you can't serve that well all the time, right? That is not sustainable. But what I saw last night from Fonseca, that's like, this feels like a better, like an evolved.

Torrey Hawkins (31:41.485)
Not all six matches are seven matches.

Alvin Owusu (31:52.714)
version of himself, not like a I'm playing great today. It's just like, I'm better now than I was six months ago at doing the things that I was already doing. And that, that is the maturation that you look for. have to keep in mind he's 19, right? So I think we talked about this in our year in review. It's like a player who was like ranked 80 and then 40 and then 30. Like I'm not looking for him to make a jump to the quarterfinals of a grand slam right now.

I just want to see him tracking there. And that's in the macro and the micro. I want to see him in matches like this, not look overwhelmed, not looked out of control, not look like this is too much, like still able to do things to hurt the top players. go, we went, we talked about this in another podcast about how many reps you need against the best to get comfortable against playing the best. You know, he's only played three top 10 players ever. That's wild.

Torrey Hawkins (32:32.205)
right.

Torrey Hawkins (32:48.813)
Yeah, I believe that. And to be that comfortable doing it, that was pretty solid. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (32:51.784)
That's what.

Alvin Owusu (32:55.305)
Yeah, I mean he beat Rublev last year at the Australian Open. I think it was 2025. Prior to that he lost to Jack at the French Open last year and he lost to Taylor at Eastbourne. Different surfaces, different times of the year, so on and so forth. Eastbourne and French Open were pretty close to each other. But I'm seeing, you can see it all starting to come together and he's just gotta be able to.

stack matches, stack tournaments, be healthy, right? He's been unhealthy for a while. Getting that back to a place where he can trust himself in tournaments. yeah, you talked about the serve. And that's kind of the, in a match that's that close on the scoreboard, you tend to look in the stats and see like, can he tease out here? When you look at, Fonseca was able to make

Torrey Hawkins (33:25.795)
Nope. Nope.

Alvin Owusu (33:52.393)
70 % of his first serves.

Torrey Hawkins (33:53.829)
That was again, changer to me.

Alvin Owusu (33:56.554)
Yannick made 59 % of his first serves. Yet.

Three points, FunSecond was plus six, so nine aces, three double faults. Yannick's Center was plus 14. What does that tell me? Maybe we're just going, maybe Center's just going a little bigger. Going to.

Torrey Hawkins (34:18.527)
and intentionally going bigger because I think he realizes he needs to for other for the rank and files and he will not let what happened with him and Novak happen again. He needs to step up his offense. He felt like and I feel that's the case. He let Novak out hit him in Australia. He has let Carlos out hit him from time to time and he's been so used to hitting and and handling pace and countering that he's still allowing them to get the upper hand and I think

coaching staff and him had made a decision.

I've got to start going through these matches more and taking a few more cuts at bat at the same time I'd rather have a few more six and sixes than having the longer matches where I'm starting to get tired in the heat and starting to take a death of a thousand cuts. I think it's a smart move. I thought both players got better today Alvin. I thought Yao did great to get that exposure and had that belief that he could hang close. I thought that Yannick actually got about a half a level better today under pressure I might add from the young star.

And I was kind happy to see him mix it up, get chirpy with the crowd a little bit. It looked like he had a little, had some words. he's got a little Guido side of him. You know what I mean? little, what's a good Italian henchman name? know, there's gotta be a good Salvatore or, you know, there's gotta be something.

Alvin Owusu (35:33.225)
Okay, okay.

Alvin Owusu (35:45.428)
I think this is when we push it to the listeners and say, if you've got a good Italian henchman nickname for Mr. Center, drop it in the comments. Let me talk to you. Let me talk to you. Yeah, but also like the Winter Sun Force Heroes margin, like Yao was at plus three, was at plus 16, right? So you could, mean, he's in his flow. He's in his flow. think Yannick did very structurally sound Yannick things, right?

Torrey Hawkins (35:48.771)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, give me a good... Hey, come here. Come here. Let me talk to you.

Torrey Hawkins (36:02.499)
Yep. Yep.

Alvin Owusu (36:14.813)
He is a champion, a legit champion. Put the bag down today, Hall of Famer. And yet somehow the story's still about Yao because of the...

everything that he showed that let those like me feel like, yeah, I feel pretty good about what we got here on our hands.

Torrey Hawkins (36:31.022)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (36:37.485)
As you should. The thing that I want to make, you've mentioned this a ton of times before, Alvin. Both things can be true at the same time, right? So, Yow can be impressive and Sinner can still be number two in the world. So, what I saw today was, I saw number two trying to give the young upstart a little bit of a butt-whipping. Like, buddy, let me show you what number two can do. And I saw number two be like, whoa, wow.

Alvin Owusu (36:46.106)
Absolutely.

Alvin Owusu (36:53.513)
Absolutely

Torrey Hawkins (37:06.945)
Okay, I was gonna choose this match to work on my offense a little bit for the later rounds. I had no idea your threshold was that good and we should hit some time. Now that's what I saw from that match today. He got the win, he got what he wanted to do and he did what he had to do. But it was a whole lot more contested than he may have thought. And I thought y'all went in there saying, all right number two in the world, give me what you got.

I bet you don't know that I can do more than you've seen and I've seen you play. You haven't seen me much at all. You're my third or fourth top 10 match. First time they play. So I think that he didn't realize that Yao had another side to him because they never played. I remember Federer said that one time about when he played Scull. goes, playing these younger players is so hard because there's no scouting report on them. No one's played them yet. You don't know. So he says, it's kind of, you come in there a little under-prepared.

Alvin Owusu (37:43.283)
First time they played.

Torrey Hawkins (38:02.071)
And I thought that was a good point, that Roger was always a sage of wisdom. But he made the conversation.

Alvin Owusu (38:08.007)
He knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

Torrey Hawkins (38:08.677)
Those are a things. But his point was these players actually have a slight advantage because no one has the scouting report on them to begin with. And so they come out, you take Shiloh Center to just to even know what they do well. So I thought both things were true at the same time. Happy for both of Really happy for Yao. Look forward to his next tournament. again, I was just as impressed with Yanek starting up the ante a little bit and kind of air out that V6 a little bit more and take some chances.

Alvin Owusu (38:37.033)
Yeah, and even going back to the ladies match, Amanda Anasamova against Vicky Mboko, it's also their first time playing, right? And so when you have such competitive fervor at the top, both of the men's and women's game, and also new players coming in fairly frequently, similarly Naomi Osaka and Irina Sabalenka, right? They haven't played, they've played once, this is the second time they've ever played, the first time was in 2018, right? So you go,

Torrey Hawkins (39:03.169)
Bye.

Alvin Owusu (39:06.867)
Wow, that's crazy. Amanda Anasamova hadn't played Eega prior to the Wimbledon final last year, then I've played like four times since then. But it takes some time, it takes some time. You need to see it, you need to understand it, you need to start to see some tendencies.

Torrey Hawkins (39:20.152)
And.

And that segue right there, Alvin, is classic because that was the problem. It ended up going the other way, obviously, know, Anissa Mova, as much as I love her and she's a great player, she's not in Yannick's Center yet, right, to her, not yet in her journey. She was a little bit overwhelmed with Vicki being able to be that solid for that long. I think she, because, yeah, how often has she ever seen her biggest shots come back for six shots? And there were times you could just see Alvin

She's not used to seeing her ball come back that often. You know what I mean? And so, know, at least not with that kind of pace and Vicki is just, I swear to God, the girl's just fast, man.

Alvin Owusu (40:02.45)
Vicky is, she's pong with juice, right? She is just open stance, both sides, but ripping once she gets her, like pong level 10. This is where she.

Torrey Hawkins (40:05.506)
my god. god. close up.

And then, exactly, she reminds me of the old Wii tennis game where you just out wide, you know, outside, just as money as it gets on the Wii, but.

She also has the ability to step in and crank the ball when she needs to. Her downline backhand is very underrated. Her backhand is very underrated in my opinion. Very, very solid. Her forehand, you mentioned this to me last year when you watched it, but Alvin, for whatever reason, that girl tags that ball. I wouldn't worry about a thing on it technically because she can hit it when she needs to. She can roll it, she can shape it. If anything, it might be susceptible to less pace, but I dare you to go over there and try it. You know what I mean? I dare you to go over there and roll some high balls to her forehand.

Alvin Owusu (40:55.784)
She hits it a little late, it comes off a little squirrely, but it's almost like she's factored that all in, because she don't miss it. She still hits it big.

Torrey Hawkins (40:56.167)
She might try again.

Torrey Hawkins (41:05.285)
Don't miss it. It's a big, reminds me of Fernando Gonzalez's backhand. It didn't have to come off clean. It just went big and it went straight. So it was a bit of a Tim Wakefield old school, socks, knuckle ball, but didn't matter. It went straight, went across the plate. Hey, you handle it and then let me know how bad it is. know what I mean? So that's where I was. It was a fun match to watch. I saw, I was really impressed to see.

Alvin Owusu (41:11.24)
Uhhh

Alvin Owusu (41:25.796)
Right. Right.

Torrey Hawkins (41:32.921)
Amanda be moving around the court as quick and nimble as she was. It's about the fastest I've seen her move and the longest, as long as points as I've seen her have to defend and to create that kind of pace, only gonna help her down the road. And I was just as impressed to see Vicky kind of withstand the barrage that she did. So again, I felt like both of them got better.

And again, I think the only thing I was gonna mention is you gotta mention something about your boy, the fellow lefty, your current lefty poster child, Lerner Tia. I mean, that brother is just still just doing, putting in the work.

Alvin Owusu (42:07.688)
mean right now, your lefty, because Jack don't look too bad right now. I feel like, we'll get to Lerner, but I feel like, we talked about this with Arthur Fies a couple weeks ago. 10 matches, I'm gonna go ahead and put it down. 10 matches is about the threshold for these players to get back to where they need to be. Jack is just about, I think he's playing Novak right now.

Torrey Hawkins (42:12.805)
Yeah, I see over the next minute.

Torrey Hawkins (42:19.755)
so good to see him back.

Torrey Hawkins (42:31.524)
Yep.

Alvin Owusu (42:36.264)
down to Sepid on serve in the second. And at this point, Jack looks like Jack. I mean, he went through, who'd he go through the other day? Cirundolo? Like, Cirundolo ain't nobody's vacation, right? That is a, we call him rank and file, but like that guy's, he's top 30 in the world.

Torrey Hawkins (42:46.137)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (42:54.381)
ranking file for Master 1000s. That's a higher rank and a much higher file.

Alvin Owusu (42:57.594)
Right, yeah, yeah. I mean, but like, if you're not, right, you don't wanna see that on your quote unquote comeback trail, but like for Jack to handle him as easily as he did, it's like, Jack, Jack's, Jack is back, he's fine. But he's just now hitting that 10 match mark. Arthur hit 10 matches in Doha, and you see what he did to Felix the other day. Felix a little bit under the weather there, whatever, whatever, but still, Arthur looks great. Arthur looks great.

Torrey Hawkins (43:05.721)
No doubt.

Torrey Hawkins (43:24.377)
He knows.

Alvin Owusu (43:26.31)
He looks like he's right back where he should have been and, and, moving up into the right. So,

Torrey Hawkins (43:30.733)
He looked great against Alcaraz in that match in Doha. He just played Alcaraz. You know what mean? Which needs to be said because he looked good. He looked very good. Alcaraz unfortunately looked better but my point being it wasn't any fault of what Arthur was doing.

Alvin Owusu (43:35.906)
Yeah, right.

Torrey Hawkins (43:46.981)
And when I saw him create that level of firepower and the length, no doubt very similar to the match we're talking about, know, Fonseca and Center, know, Boko and Nessimova. When you get pushed to the limit like that and come up with the goods 80 % of the time on all the long points, all the, what I call the gut checkpoints.

Alvin Owusu (43:47.025)
Right, right.

Torrey Hawkins (44:06.468)
You're playing good tennis. Now you gotta manage the ones in the middle and make your first serves and repeat, rinse and repeat. But you heard it right here. I was impressed with him then and so I thought he was due for a win like this. If anybody's gonna get caught slipping.

He was gonna be there to pick it up and take it to the house. I was really happy to see Arthur and obviously the best look for him the rest of the way. Cuz now it starts to get to little, now we're getting to the meat of things. But this is Alvin Owusu. It's gonna matter at the end of the tournament type of tournament right now, everybody. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (44:33.947)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (44:41.028)
On both sides, man, on both sides. We're firming up for really nice, you know, this is an interesting tournament because in an interesting part of the year, every other swing that we have, right, usually starts with some 500s, you get some thousands in there, and then you end up with a Grand Slam, and that concludes the swing, the season, whatever. Here, we start with a Grand Slam. There's one warmup event, maybe you squeeze another one in there if you lose early in the first one, but then you're right, boom.

Great slam, let's go. And then the women get like four Masters 1000s, the men get two, and then we're off to Europe for the clay. It's a very weird, like, I wish we could move Australia a little bit, put it at the end of this thing, let us sunshine double into Australia.

Torrey Hawkins (45:18.595)
We're talking here.

Torrey Hawkins (45:24.453)
I know it, I know it, I've said it before but my tennis commissioner idea probably doesn't have a day in court but I agree with you. The thing I want people who haven't been out to Indian Wells understand, I've been to two tournaments Alvin where the win was so bad that...

your normal feed wasn't gonna make it in the court if you didn't hook it in a certain way. And your ball toss, if you didn't have the ability to ball on the way up, you're gonna struggle with your serve. If you weren't a very good wind player, you were gonna struggle. And those two tournaments are in the same state, the same part of the state, about 30 50 miles, 30 miles, 20 miles away from each other. Easter Bowl and any of the else.

Alvin Owusu (46:14.887)
And then,

Torrey Hawkins (46:17.445)
I remember being at a tournament and if my girl Ashley Shellis is watching this podcast she'll remember this day very well. We were at the Riviera, the old school site, low fences, kind of like Indian Wells has, I don't know why that's named. Right.

Alvin Owusu (46:30.743)
That's where they used to play the tournament at Riviera. I believe so.

Torrey Hawkins (46:33.709)
I actually was complaining about the wind. I grew up in Kansas. We get a lot of wind, we lot of gusts. It's a flat state, but not many trees. So there's a lot of wind. Wind comes off the Rockies. mean, we'll get crazy snow drifts, crazy wind. You'll get 20, 30 mile wind on a normal day, if it's windy, especially before or after a storm. I know how to toss it on the way up and carve a slice of the body. I'm pretty good in the wind because I grew up in it.

I'm trying to explain this to Ashley before a match. Alvin, she tossed the ball up. The wind... Now Alvin, you understand what I'm talking about when I say the wind. She tossed the ball and the wind blew her toss to the back fence on the fly. And she looked at me like, how am I supposed to handle that?

Alvin Owusu (47:22.097)
Yeah, go home.

Alvin Owusu (47:29.713)
Well Ashley, we might be under-arm-serving today.

Torrey Hawkins (47:30.371)
So there was actually

You got that much wind, you bend over, you tie your shoe, and you wait for that darn gust to pass by because there's no way you're not serving in that kind of gust. I saw the tops of the palm trees come off and land on courts and land on golf courses next to them. That's how, and Indian Wells to me is worse. Here's why. It's in the middle of nowhere and that whole thing is basically a parking lot out there and when the tournament's there, the main courts are there, the saving court's there, and the

course it gets swirled. With those outer cords Alvin, the fences are like three feet high and after that Alvin...

Stand you're hearing the wind you're hearing the wind more than you're it's almost loud up to you can't even talk you know know hey what cross got across and it's because it's so Windy and it's and it's all and it's just wide open out there. You know what I mean? I don't know but I just knows that the wind is so and certain times a day like kind of like late morning and like Kind of like that early afternoon and then if that an evening tends to die down early early morning. It's beautiful, but that when that wind starts picking

up man. It is it we're talking 30 to 40 mile an hour gusts. That's not a breeze. That is a needle force.

Alvin Owusu (48:46.535)
Right, well, let's add that, let's take that as a factor, the wind, right? you know, Indian Wells prides itself on a lot of different things, a couple different monikers, like this is the fifth slam, it's the players tournament, so on and so forth. It looks great, but let's add the wind, right? One, let's add the gritty ass courts that they play on.

Torrey Hawkins (48:52.293)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (49:06.191)
Beautiful.

Alvin Owusu (49:15.387)
Right? Which does things to not only your ball, but your timing as well. Right? Add in that depending on the time of day, daylight versus night, the conditions, the weather changes drastically. Very similar to Australia where like in the middle of the day, it's hot 95 plus, it can get down into the fifties at night. You see people wearing long sleeves, right? That changes how the ball comes off the streets. Right?

Changes how you might need to have your racket strong, right? That changes how a ball is going to not only fly through the air, but check up off of the, off of the, off of the payment, sorry, off of the court. A little bit different. It's all, it ain't as sweet as it looks on TV. It's difficult. I mean, that's why, and then you shift to Miami where it's just hot, like real hot, and it's fast, and it's humid. So like,

Torrey Hawkins (49:56.835)
Yep. All the above.

Torrey Hawkins (50:08.429)
in human. Yeah. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (50:12.773)
when they say it's hard to win the sunshine double, it's really hard to win the sunshine double because they're two very, very different tournaments. It's about as different as trying to win the channel slam between French and Wimbledon. They're not the same hardcore tournament. Very, very different.

Torrey Hawkins (50:18.565)
Thank you.

Torrey Hawkins (50:27.461)
No, no, and it really shows me the players that can make adjustments. I would even add one last piece of that outer court versus a stadium court, you know what I mean? Is dihedral the opposite. I mean, it's just, there's a difference between a one way win and August and you got to play that side like you do any other winter.

Alvin Owusu (50:37.646)
there you go. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (50:45.947)
And the stadium sunk into the ground as well. Right.

Torrey Hawkins (50:47.909)
the ground so you got any high ball is actually more is more affected by the wind and if you tag and bang keep it low you might actually be okay and then and then you got to work you always have to play to it it's like bifocal lenses you know my mom was always talking about you know wait I got it I got it look my eyes adjust to the to the to the other lens by the lens that's that anything high is and so there goes your let me explore the looper every once in while oh that's right I forgot about the wind you it has to be a constant feature that you're thinking about so I agree with you it's a very difficult

as picturesque as it looks it might be one of the worst playing conditions for a tournament. thing I can think of would be an outdoor south of middle east tournament. That's about it. That's the only thing that could get worse for the heat and the cold and the wind. But of course most of the tournaments are indoors. you know I agree with you 100%. It's very very difficult and those of you who have not been out there, you're seeing them well.

It's a tournament you need to experience because even as a fan it is, but it is windy. mean it is, it's not, it hurts, hurts. You gotta have shades. mean there's a little bit of grit, a little bit of, you know, little bit of sand, you know, kicks up when the wind blows. I mean it's just, it's tough. Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (52:02.673)
Sounds horrible, sounds horrible. I haven't attended the event. I've been to the site for a site visit for another event. And I was like, yeah, it's flat. It's a parking lot in a parking lot with some tennis courts. It's very, I know, I'm on the, I was going back and forth with our bread friend over at Blacksplint Global, Blackspin Global, and they're on my side. I'm like,

Torrey Hawkins (52:07.791)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (52:29.927)
You can kind of miss me with Indian Wells. I'm not a huge fan. Anastasia over at Grounds Pass is a big fan. She's there right now, I believe. Just, yeah, not for me. I need my courts, my conditions to be a little more true. I'll just watch on TV. But I know what's going on there. I know what's going on. Before I let you get out of here, I wanna talk a little bit about Mr. Alcaraz.

Torrey Hawkins (52:46.211)
Yeah.

Alvin Owusu (52:57.959)
I guess he played today against Casper, looked great. His match against Arthur Rinderknecht. Arthur came out ballin', bringin' the stick, servin' and vollein', servin' lights out, being extremely aggressive, ends up winning the first set. Chucky was in a good space, he narrowed down a little bit.

Torrey Hawkins (53:00.868)
Yeah.

Torrey Hawkins (53:04.357)
Okay.

Alvin Owusu (53:26.255)
was able to withstand the storm, got there, won the second set, then won this third set going away. Did not lose a point on his serve in the entire third set. That is impressive. But the take, I had a few different observations during the match, and then we'll get to what he said after the match.

Artur Rinne connection definitely fits the profile or was trying to fit the profile of players that have previously given Mr. Alcaraz some trouble. Tall guys, big serving with an intent to come forward. The ghost of Alexander Zverev who did that to Alcaraz at the 2024 Australian Open. You saw it with a butter.

Torrey Hawkins (53:58.788)
Yep.

Torrey Hawkins (54:10.692)
enough.

Alvin Owusu (54:14.545)
Bautik Bandarzan Shlup a couple years ago at the US Open. There's been a few other random ones, but I say that to say if you're going to, your best chance against Carlos Sacaraz is not to run around and hit balls from the baseline. That doesn't go well for anyone not named Yannick Sender on occasion. The slight growth that we saw was Carlos not to get flustered.

Torrey Hawkins (54:29.477)
Right. Right. Right.

Alvin Owusu (54:45.23)
He did not go away, he just stood in and continued to do what he needed to do with the look on his face. Like, you can't do this all match. You slip half a level and I got you, right? And then that's what happened. So on and so forth. Carlos said after the match, I feel like I'm playing Roger Federer out there every single match. Because everyone brings their A game. This is reminiscent of Serena's, I'm getting everyone's best stuff.

Torrey Hawkins (54:53.125)
Right.

Right. Which is all he needs.

Alvin Owusu (55:13.507)
every single time and that's what it takes. So that's what it takes.

Torrey Hawkins (55:22.021)
Is that a comment or is that a question?

Alvin Owusu (55:24.845)
It's a bit of a comment. It's also a bit of a question.

What does, and this is kind of a question not really related to that particular comment, but when you see Alcaraz go into what I'm gonna call lockdown mode, it looks a lot different than let's say Sinner's lockdown mode or Djokovic's lockdown mode. What jump have you seen from him? And we're talking about micro jumps, right? They're not huge jumps, but when he's coming in and he gets that profile player now, what is he doing differently now than what?

except befuddled him before.

Alvin Owusu (56:08.494)
Or do you dismiss the premise out of hand completely? I'll give you that option as well.

Torrey Hawkins (56:11.204)
I don't want dismiss it. think it's more of an evolution.

Torrey Hawkins (56:18.437)
As the number one player in the world, there is a huge target on your back every time you do anything. Mini tennis, baseline game. Bobby Reynolds and I were watching Fed at a warm up at the US Open one year. And I remember this guy, I remember this shot, out of it, I remember it like it was yesterday.

This young player was tagging balls like a ball one. mean ripping the forehand, tagging balls, almost playing out points and Fad's literally just getting warmed up. I mean I think maybe Fad's hit seven balls, eight balls and this guy runs around and tags the forehand his biggest day. BAM! I it's just like one zero. He's like buddy, I'm getting my chance to play Fad. Fad reaches back out

on the second looks over at him okay i'm gonna give you that one and about the third time the guy does it mind you this is fancy at about 15 balls total from warm up to still stretching out a little bit you know he reaches over and hits this backhand slice with some kind of wonky grip behind him the drop shot he hits on this guy alvin lands at the service line and comes back with the

weirdest kind of Darth Vader spin you've ever seen in your life. And then Fad looks over at the guy and says,

Let's just calm down. Let's get a little rally here. It told me that, he has the goods all the time. And that he understands that even in warmup, guys are trying to test their racket against him. He carries that with him all the time. Back to your point. Al Kharaz is realizing what number one in the world is now. It's not just the ranking you carry.

Alvin Owusu (58:21.99)
Mm.

Torrey Hawkins (58:24.581)
It's the top of the top. People are comparing their best to you because that's who you are. And he has to bring it every day. There is no days off. Yeah, you can lose. Fed lost the matches. Rafa lost the matches. Novak lost the matches. But they're going to always compare themselves to you, especially you and your pride. And that is a career win for 90 % of the top 100.

and as this early so so I think what he's starting to come to grips with at a ripe old age of 23 is it 22 23 what is it

Alvin Owusu (59:03.078)
think it's funny too. It's disgusting.

Torrey Hawkins (59:04.517)
He's starting to realize how much of a, I don't want to use the word obligation to have a negative connotation to it. I want to use the word how much of a honor it is to carry that mantle and to have that Stanley Cup, so to speak, in your possession. It is hard fought for and you do not, it's not given, it's earned and guys are trying to take it from you at every opportunity. And I think that's the thing that he's starting to understand.

I get all the ages mixed up. Millennials, guess I'm gonna call him, Gen Zers, whatever you wanna call him. He is starting to find out in his own young mentality how hard number ones before him had to work to maintain that. So you can talk about weeks at number one, or in this case, numbers of weeks, plural, at number one, that's a big deal. And I think that's part of the whole Problem 2 album is that he's starting to

figure that out. It's not just beating Alcrest, not just winning a few slams, not just having a nice schedule and working his way through his team and his base and how do I play this guy and managing his social life and going to Ibiza when he can't. No, no, You can do all that too. But when you're playing.

We are in absolute, we are locked in, we are 100 % on point all the time. And there is no off, you know what I mean, when you're on the court. And we play for that level of excellence every day. And I think that's why the number ones all respect each other so much, because they realize how hard it is to do.

Alvin Owusu (01:00:41.87)
Yeah, that's a really good point and I think that's probably the, that's the way to look at it. When we look at Carlos and now that he's done all the things, he's the youngest to do this and he's got this many slams and he's, yeah, yeah, yeah, at this point we're just, we have to keep the main thing the main thing and now that, when he was 19 years old, won that US Open and finished the year, he got to number one, right, but wasn't able to sustain it and then.

did a little bit of chasing for a couple of years.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:12.261)
this sunshine double a year ago.

Alvin Owusu (01:01:15.352)
Right. Right. So he didn't get back to one in the world again, I think until the end of last year. And so now it's not just winning slams and becoming number one. Now that's being number one, the expect, the expert living number one, the expectation is to be Carlos Alcaraz every time you get on the tennis court. And that is a whole different, you know, what's the, what is the reward for, for hard work? It's more hard work, right? The bar has been raised because that's the standard that you

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:26.19)
Living them.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:39.685)
hard work.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:43.301)
There's no way he's dead.

Alvin Owusu (01:01:44.902)
You have set, right? So it's, in that press conference, it was almost like a realization of like, yeah, it's like, yeah, he's like, everyone looks like Roger Federer against me, and it's like, and everyone's looking back at him like, yeah, that's welcome to being number one. Right, right, and it's like, everyone's gonna be coming for your head every single time. This is the 73 win Warriors, this is the LeBron James Heat, like, there you go, every.

Torrey Hawkins (01:01:58.405)
You're our Roger Federer. Hello.

Torrey Hawkins (01:02:10.02)
Yeah, 95, 98 balls and so on. That's Ball kids are checking out. Oh hey, you missed that ball. I thought you made that ball. I mean, it doesn't stop. mean, that's who you are right now. You know what I mean? And if you want to stay that.

Alvin Owusu (01:02:13.656)
every house you walk into. People are bringing it. People are bringing it.

Torrey Hawkins (01:02:29.005)
right and I think he wants to stay there and he needs to get very really comfortable with that with that yoke so to speak and you know put on the shirt

I'm good, I got it. And make it happen because he recalls last year he didn't have that and he wasn't given that same same but he also had blood in the water. You know what mean? you know, and I think he wants, I think he doesn't mind. I think he's starting to come to grips with it but I also think he's starting to understand it a little better and understand the maturity. Perhaps that was one of the pieces that Juan Carlos was trying to get him to understand without facing it directly. He was trying to face it through hard work and through his mindset.

without making them address the fact that, by the way, you're the best player in the world. And this is how we work.

And I think one of the biggest things he got from Juan Carlos, among others, was that mindset and that work ethic. And I think he needs to understand through the end of it, that was one of the biggest pieces that, one of the biggest gifts that JC gave him was that mindset to be able to do this now like it's all I ever do. There's no other way. And I think that's a big piece of what he got from him.

Alvin Owusu (01:03:42.544)
Well put, and I think that's good place to put a pin in it. I'll also give you the heads up that Draper and Djokovic are about to start the third set. So Jack's back. Love to see it, love to see it. I'm Alvin, that's Tory, that's three, we are out.

Torrey Hawkins (01:03:52.141)
Good time.

Torrey Hawkins (01:03:57.509)
Peace.