By Simon Briggs
Hardcore tennis fans are waiting impatiently for their first glimpse of Break Point, the Netflix documentary series that – if the company’s hopes come true – will do for fuzzy yellow balls what Drive to Survive did for six-cylinder engines.
And with just over three weeks to go before the show launches on January 13, American No 1 Taylor Fritz is suffering from butterflies in the tummy. One of several young tyros trying to breach the walls of Fortress Djokovic-Nadal, 25-year-old Fritz has accepted a leading role in this latest sporting reality show – as, indeed, has his partner, Morgan Riddle, an Instagram influencer with 100,000 followers.
Yet Fritz – like Formula One’s Max Verstappen, who accused Netflix of having “faked a few rivalries” – is all too aware that his public -perception will be defined in the editing suite.
“I don’t know if I want to watch it,” Fritz said. “I’m scared. I’m scared of how things can be cut up. Especially because I haven’t tried to filter myself at all. Yeah, I’ve tried to just be very, very genuine. But they can cut things however they want to cut things.
“It’s like with Nick [Kyrgios, who is to be another prominent part of a show that also features Stefanos Tsitsipas and women’s world No 1 Iga Swiatek]. They could cut it up to make Nick look such an amazing guy. And then they could also cut it up to make him look like the villain, which I feel like they might do just because that’s how a lot of people in tennis see him – even though I think he’s great for the sport.”
Thanasi Kokkinakis (left) and Nick Kyrgios in the new series ‘Break Point’
Verstappen made exactly this point about Drive to Survive in 2021, when he pulled back from giving any interviews in the series and claimed that the producers were souping up rivalries (he has since returned tentatively to the fold).
And yet, Netflix was the best thing to happen to F1 since Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna locked wheels at Suzuka in 1989. The streaming service delivered millions of new fans, with a high representation in the United States and plenty of under-45s. As it happens, these are the same demographics in which tennis could use a fuel injection.
“I’m excited for what this could potentially do for tennis, especially in the United States,” said Fritz, who was born in California but lives in Miami. “What a lot of people don’t understand is that, in the US, tennis is very unknown. We always have a joke when we come to Europe. We’re out doing stuff, and someone recognises me and asks for a picture. I’ll say, ‘That would never happen in the US’.”
If there is one major brake on tennis fortunes, it is the loss of millions of American viewers since the retirements of Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. In August, it was alarming to see the US-based Tennis Channel broadcasting pickleball – a bastardised version of the sport that uses paddles and plastic balls – ahead of the final of Washington’s new WTA event.
In Fritz’s mind, the decline could be connected to the culture of civility and respect which now dominates the locker room. This represents a dramatic switch from the rambunctious days of John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, and surely owes much to the spotless Swiss neutrality of Roger Federer.
Breakt Point star Taylor FritzCredit:AP
Fritz was determined to present an unfiltered version of himself to the Netflix cameras, just to break the monotony.
“I’m tired of it,” he said, in relation to the blandness of the average tennis interview. “It’s so boring. It’s always the same stuff. I just didn’t want to act differently in front of the cameras. I wanted to be the same person I always am, and I said if people hate me then they hate me. But I hope not. Tennis is a game that’s very… the fan base is much older and very stuck in traditional ways. So, anything that can be seen as controversial and out of the norm – as in, not the usual rehearsed answers to press questions – people get really upset about it. I’d say there’s not enough invitation to, like, be different.”
It is as if a new clause – “thou shalt not badmouth thy peers” – has been added to the players’ unwritten code of conduct. The principle of sportsmanship is admirable, and when you have as much to say as Federer, there is no need for mind games. But any kind of uniformity becomes stifling, no matter how well-intentioned.
Denmark’s Holger Rune has been a welcome outlier in 2022 – a talented teenager with a flair for chaos. After his French Open quarter-final defeat by Norway’s Casper Ruud, Rune claimed the usually understated Ruud came up to him in the locker room and yelled “Jaaa!” in his face. True or not, it was a nice change from the vanilla.
Taylor Fritz’s girlfriend Morgan Riddle watches him play at Wimbldeon.Credit:Getty
“In the end, it’s going to have a positive impact on the sport, because next time they play, there’s going to be a lot of buzz about it,” said Fritz about the incident.
This is exactly the sort of vibe that Break Point is hoping to create. Whether it can match the impact of Drive to Survive must be doubtful, given that the sports-doc market is more crowded now, and the pandemic-related bounce for streaming services has fizzled out.
But if it can inject a little more drama into what has become a rather mechanical tour, Break Point will have done tennis a huge favour. Whether the rivalries are confected or not.
The Telegraph, London
