Roland Garros Day 13 - Djokovic climbs tennis Everest; Greatest set ever? Tsitsipas in the final
The Tennis Podcast
David Law
4.5 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Andy Roddick says it’s one of the greatest matches he’s ever seen, Andy Murray describes it as ‘perfect’, and Cher weighs in, you know a tennis match has been a bit special.
After Novak Djokovic did the impossible - again! - and beat Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros, Catherine, David and Matt tried to make sense of it all. How did he do it? What was up with Nadal? And was the third set the best set of tennis ever?
There’s also chat about Stefanos Tsitsipas’ emotional victory over Alexander Zverev to reach his first Grand Slam final. Why did he go off the boil in sets three and four? And does he stand a chance against Djokovic on Sunday?
Looking ahead to Barbora Krejcikova vs. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the women’s final, we give our predictions.
The Tennis Podcast is presented by Catherine Whitaker and David Law, and features Matt Roberts. It is produced weekly year-round, and daily during the Grand Slam tournaments. It is crowdfunded by listeners each December.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Billie Jean King. This is Mary and Bartoli. I'm Matt Vellander. This is Mary Carillo. |
| 0:05.3 | I'm San Roenca. I'm like New York. This is Yannick Noah and you're listening to the tennis podcast. |
| 0:21.4 | Well, I don't know about you, Matt and David, but I think I have just witnessed and I'm currently |
| 0:27.9 | basking in the after-glow of one of the greatest men's tennis matches of all time. I certainly |
| 0:33.1 | think that I've just watched the best set of men's tennis in my lifetime. Fans of |
| 0:41.6 | or people that are particularly touchy about recency bias might not be a fan of this podcast |
| 0:46.9 | because we'll get all sorts of accusations thereof, but show me a better set of tennis |
| 0:54.0 | than the third that was played tonight between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. I dare you to show me |
| 1:01.3 | a better set of tennis. Is this hyperbole, David, or am I bang on? Or somewhere in between? |
| 1:10.8 | It's not hyperbole. I think recency bias is a real thing and I think it's definitely something |
| 1:18.1 | that I've succumbed to over the years when I look back and think of things that I've |
| 1:23.6 | waxed on about at the time and then maybe looked back at differently later. But there's |
| 1:29.4 | there are a few reasons that I don't think that that's the case this time. The main one is that |
| 1:35.6 | the most vital ingredient of a truly great match or a truly in this case, I agree with you probably |
| 1:44.6 | the best set that I can think of in my life that I've seen that being the third set is that both |
| 1:51.3 | players play pretty much their best tennis at the same time and you only get that normally in |
| 1:58.6 | little spells in any match, sometimes in any tournament. We've heard so many players tell us that |
| 2:05.9 | an awful lot of tennis is just their average level and occasionally they'll hit the heights. |
| 2:11.3 | Well, these two are two of the greatest players of all time without question and they were playing |
| 2:18.3 | their best tennis at the same time and it I felt that it was almost wrong that I was allowed to |
| 2:26.2 | watch it for free. I mean, okay, I'm paying a tiny little subscription to a streaming service, |
| 2:32.4 | but I'm thinking how am I getting to do this? It's because they were just toe to toe, side to side, |
... |
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