Toronto 2021 - Behind The Scenes
The National Bank Open 2021 in Toronto has been a blast so far.
Some would say it’s lacking star power. But for the true tennis fan, there is more than enough quality tennis to go around.
In the first Semi-Final today, Reilly Opelka took out Stefanos Tsitsipas in an extremely tight match that had only one break of serve.
“I think it was just an accumulation of pressure put on him” Opelka told me after the match as the reason he was able to finally get the crucial break of serve.
Daniil Medvedev ended up easing past John Isner as the tall American didn’t look to be at 100% and Medwed was perfect in his execution.
In both meetings with Isner, Medvedev has been able to break his serve at ease, which is almost unheard of on the ATP Tour.
The final
Medvedev vs Opelka is a very intriguing match up based on what we saw in the semi-finals.
Opelka beat Tsitsipas, a Top-3, solid all-court player like Medvedev. While Medvedev beat a tall First Team All-Bot member in Isner.
So they’ve both had success against the types of players they will face in the final. Who will be better? Only time will tell.
Both men are feeling very confident and hard to beat. This should be a doozie.
Hearing from players is a privilege
Being in the press room as a tennis fan at heart is a very cool experience. You get to watch these players go through the emotions of a match, then ask them things you want to know about.
Why did you come to net then? How were your nerves on this point?
Thoughtfulness has been the theme of the week for me.
Medvedev, Tsitsipas, Isner, Shapovalov and others gave insights into their tennis minds and personalities in depth. It never seemed like we had to pull answers out of them. Most responses I got were thoughtful, measured, and interesting.
The notion that players hate doing press seems to be false, as they could give much less of an effort and no one would fault them.
Seeing the overall effort that goes into making professional tennis happen is amazing as always. From guys like Greg Sharko ATP Player representative to the media, announcers, IT people etc. it’s truly an amazing traveling event.
Shout out to Tennis Canada for including The Slice in the press pool for NBO 2021.
It’s been a blast!