Firstly, apologies for the patch of dead air on this channel in recent days. I have a bunch of stories heating up on various burners in the Bounces kitchen and frustratingly several of them have been taking far longer than expected to cook to completion as I wait for delivery of a missing ingredient or two. But hopefully the wait will be satisfied and then some as I’m hopeful that there will be many tasty courses coming to your table in rapid succession.
In the meantime, I was delighted to get lots of great questions from Bounces subscribers from the recent call for questions. A few of the ones not covered in this dispatch might inspire standalone Bounces pieces in the near future, particularly on the subject of the tennis schedule, which was a frequent topic for queries. (I also got one about tennis documentaries, and wonder if folks would be interested in a fuller review of the new Naomi Osaka documentary I watched this month?)
I would still love to get more questions from y’all to fill future mailbags—and there are still a few in my hopper that will make it into the next edition—so if you want to send any, please do. You can send your questions as a message on Substack, a DM to me on Instagram, or an email to me.
Speaking of scheduling, a quick programming note:
The next monthly Bounces Zoom chat for subscribers at the Double Bounce (Founding) level will be this Saturday, October 25th at 2 pm ET, which hopefully will be doable for European subscribers as well as North Americans. The first one was a fun time and I hope more folks can make it to the second one as well. (I plan to keep rotating time slots in hopes of finding an elusive Goldilocks time). I will send out a message to those subscribers with a Zoom link shortly before we begin, but you can put it in your calendars now, hope you can make it!
And for subscribers at all levels: as Bounces begins its second year, lots of y’all have been renewing or may soon be renewing annual subscriptions for the first time. Renewals are crucial to keeping Bounces on track for 2026 and beyond, so I sincerely hope lots of you will stay on board and help keep this going.
And now, onto the first batch of your questions. Topics include possible gay players in men’s tennis, the Australian Open’s plans for mixed doubles, a spike in surprise runs this year, losing hope in Sebastian Korda, what Li Na is up to lately, and how tennis players handle normal life things like jury duty.
Please do subscribe to read it all!
Without outing anyone, are there ATP players who are known within the tour to be gay but who are not out publicly? I always wonder at how few out gay players there are on the ATP Tour and question what it says about either the culture of the tour or of the advice that managers or others give the players about their public personas.
This has, admittedly, been a fairly frequent topic of conversation—among fans, media, and even players—for as long as I’ve been in tennis, though almost always off-record and behind the scenes.
Here’s what I know and what I can tell you: