French Open Preview - Catherine Courtside With Serena Williams; Draw Dissection; And What On Earth Is Dominic Thiem Doing?
The Tennis Podcast
David Law
4.5 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the French Open prepares to get underway at Roland Garros in Paris, Catherine Whitaker sits courtside as Serena Williams goes through her preparation for the year’s second Grand Slam tournament.
What did Simona Halep and Jelena Ostapenko have to say ahead of Roland Garros? Catherine has been talking to them.
Who is scheduled to meet Rafael Nadal as he tries to win his 11th French Open title? Catherine and David look at his likely route.
And what on earth is Dominic Thiem doing playing and winning the Lyon tournament the day before a Grand Slam tournament gets underway? Is he not going to have worn himself out? Or does he know something we don’t?
There’s talk of Kyle Edmund, Jo Konta, and a resurgent James Ward, who has reached the final in the Loughborough challenger tournament.
There will daily editions of The Tennis Podcast throughout the French Open, in association with Telegraph Sport. It is presented by Catherine Whitaker (Eurosport) and David Law (BBC 5 Live, BT Sport).
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm John McEnore. I'm Bjorn Borg. |
| 0:02.2 | This is Martina Navratlova. I'm Matt Vylander. |
| 0:04.9 | I'm Stan Ravinka. I'm Lighten Hutt. I'm Andy Murray. |
| 0:07.6 | And you're listening to the tennis podcast. |
| 0:20.0 | Well, hello and welcome to the tennis podcast brought to you in association with a telegraph |
| 0:24.4 | on the eve of the French Open at Roland Garros. You can probably hear in the background |
| 0:30.4 | the sound of ball on tennis racket. Where are you Catherine Whitaker? |
| 0:35.9 | I'm in the presence of balls in tennis racket. It's David. I am a court side at Roland Garros. |
| 0:42.0 | Court number four in the presence of a certain Serena Williams. And of course Patrick Moratogli |
| 0:48.6 | and an unidentified female hitting partner. But most importantly, I'm in the presence of |
| 0:54.4 | Serena Williams, who is about 20 minutes into a scheduled two hour practice session. |
| 1:01.4 | Wow, that's it already sounds pretty intense just hearing you down the line. I'm not in |
| 1:06.8 | Roland Garros right now. I'm in the UK in my office before I take my son to football practice. |
| 1:12.1 | But like she is really ripping into that ball by the sounds of things. |
| 1:16.7 | French Open starts tomorrow. Things are gearing up there. |
| 1:19.6 | Yeah, I mean, yeah, as you would expect, she is absolutely high intensity. |
| 1:25.3 | She's standing at the moment about a meter inside the baseline to receive the serve of this |
| 1:30.0 | poor unidentified female hitting partner. And yeah, I'm not going to fall into that trap |
| 1:34.9 | that we discuss a lot, David, of saying, oh, yeah, she looks really good in practice because |
| 1:39.5 | we know that Serena Williams can hit tennis balls really, really well. And that's exactly what she's |
| 1:43.6 | doing at the moment. And in all honesty with Serena, what's going to be the barometer of her success |
| 1:52.2 | here and in her comeback is probably the movement, isn't it? And at the moment, she's just |
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