The Monthly Maestro #8 - The Best for Last
We've been treated.
The season has come to a close. And what a close it was.
November was a true treat for tennis lovers. Last month offered us the ATP -, the WTA -, the Davis Cup -, and lastly, the Next Gen Finals. All included some spectacular matchups, where the players seemed to have agreed to save the best for last.
A huge congratulations to Iga Swiatek and Novak Djokovic, both winning their year end finals and ending the season as #1. Djokovic surprisingly lost his round-robin match against Jannik Sinner, where the Italian displayed some serious ball striking in front of his home crowd. The Serb showed resilience as always however, and in their second battle he demonstrated once again why he’s still the global number one.
But it wouldn’t be their last meeting in 2023.
The Sinner Show
Italy had not won the Davis Cup, the global tennis tournament for countries, since 1976. This year their chances for the title increased significantly with players like Musetti (the very first Maestro of this newsletter), Berrettini (unfortunately still injured), Sonego, Arnaldi, and of course, world #4 Sinner. In order to get through to the final against Australia, Italy’s frontman had to face the man he had defeated and lost to already a week before. On top of that, he had to play him twice on one day.
When seeing Sinner play, there is this comfortable feeling of: “He’s not going to miss that next shot.” It’s incredible to see how consistently he can hit his groundstrokes with so much firepower. Facing multiple match points in a row against Djokovic, Sinner stayed ice cool and eventually beat his adversary. Twice on one day, three times in twelve days. Not many players have pulled that off.
A day later he ended his match against Australian De Minaur with a bagel and Italy could crown themselves as the new Davis Cup champions. Mostly thanks to a young Italian showing us the tip of the iceberg where he’s capable of. Grazie mille Jannik.
This Month’s Maestro
It won’t come as a surprise that this month’s Maestro is an Italian. Although Sonego and Arnaldi played some terrific matches in Malaga, there is only one player that really deserves to win this year end newsletter category. Congratulazioni Jannik!
Where one Serb had to end his 2023 with a loss, another was granted a win for his last match of this season. Hamad Medjedovic left the crowd in Saudi Arabia in awe as he won the face-off with Frenchman Arthur Fils during the Next Gen Finals. The young Serb scored a staggering 9.4 on a combined serve performance score. Momentarily, we are developing a coaches course for the Thirty Love Academy about the serve, where we will dissect the usage of these kind of performance scores.
Although it wasn’t enough to become this month’s Maestro (just like Fils in the second edition), I have the feeling we are going to see a whole lot more of this promising talent in the future. His reaction to winning says it all.
Habit Challenge - Results
In November, I embraced a 30-day Habit Challenge. Inspired by two great productivity books, Atomic Habits and Someday is Today, I tried a total of 25 habits across my vitality, productivity, and mental well-being. Noteworthy habits included:
For my vitality, I started the day with lemon water, ended my showers with cold waters, and made sure to do a full body stretch daily.
Productivity strategies involved delaying my first coffee for the first hour of the day, having my phone on airplane mode as a default, and extending my Portuguese Duolingo streak rather than doom-scrolling the socials.
As for my mental well-being, habits like no snoozing, writing my intentions or gratitude for the day, and consciously celebrating small wins were great starts.
The results? I can honestly say I’ve experienced positive effects on all three areas. I must admit that I did miss a habit once or twice (like eating fish one night while I wanted to avoid eating meat altogether, but hey, does that even count?). Still, I feel better and more productive and would recommend everyone, tennis player or not, to just go and give it a try to set such a challenge up for yourself. My advice to everybody who wants to double down on some better resolutions: start now, and don't wait for January 1st.
For the complete list of habits or sources, feel free to reach out via the comments or an e-mail.
Links worth checking out
Tennis and Beyond - A fellow Substack from the highly experienced sports writer Christopher Clarey.
What Andy Roddick has been up to - Luckily Andy has not been bored since his retirement (not sponsored).
Control the Controllables - A cool podcast by Dan Kiernan to entertain, educate, and energize the tennis community.
Best, and see you next year,
Erik