Plenty of backhands and compliments this week! From charity to Holger’s positive character arc to wondering why so many Germans listen to us, we cover a bit of everything. Demon (Alex de Minaur) defends in Acapulco! (Some players could learn a lesson or two, or maybe make a deal with said tennis Demon.) Unfortunately this means we don’t see Casper Ruud in a sombrero this year. Unlike last year, Dubai was much less wholesome. Of course, we break out the psychoanalysis of Andrey Rublev, discuss...

February is the time for some of our favorite tournaments and for the youngsters to come out of the woodwork and gather points to defend. (When were these kiddos born again?!) This week we tackle Rio, Doha, and Los Cabos. Sebastian Baez captures Rio in 4K! (Someone at the ATP, please give us a Masters 1000 in South America!) Karen Khachanov takes down nineteen-year-old upstart, Jakub Mensik in Doha. Jordan Thompson provides a service in Los Cabos and takes down the rat, leading to good karma...

Sorry for the time off, everyone! The personified tennis ball in our logo had to go work for the tournament in Rotterdam. There was nothing we could do.  All jokes aside, we’re back to talk about tournaments in Montpellier, Dallas, Marseille, Cordoba, Rotterdam, Delray Beach, and Buenos Aires! It’s almost enough to make us beg for a two-week Masters 1000! We also discuss the great social media content that has been coming out lately from official accounts, Morgan Riddle’s Super Bowl...

In a delightful turn of events, the Australian Open turned out to be incredible! Two of our favorites, Jannik Sinner and Daniil Medvedev were in the final, so we were happy whichever way the cookie crumbled. We are so proud that Jannik Sinner won his first slam, even though Daniil losing from up 2 sets to 0 is a little heartbreaking. Since it is the end of yet another slam, we’re in a silly, goofy mood so if you enjoy us being a little more unhinged than usual, this episode is for...

Welcome to our usual mid-slam delulu episode! In terms of tennis, we talk about the rematch of USA Claygate, Taylor Fritz and Stefanos Tsitsipas. Thankfully, Taylor won and we saw Morgan Riddle living up to a bet and eating vegemite! Once again, we see that Andrey Rublev is the pinnacle of the “f*ck yeah, concrete!” meme as he slides by Alex de Minaur in a tough five-setter. Katie gives a doubles alley update, which includes a lamenting over the loss of Ramsbury. But! Rohan Bopanna is filling...

Unlike most of the ATP, we will be commenting on many things during this episode. Before getting into more serious topics, we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of round one. Like Andrey Rublev giving his fans, and probably himself, a migraine. Felix Auger-Alissame and Dominic Thiem played five sets of beautiful tennis and made Katie reconsider her position on BO5. Speaking of BO5, Jack Draper pulled out a tough five-setter in the heat and will he have post-puke clarity like Jannik...

We’re back for the first week of tennis! With the unfortunate timezone, we didn’t get to watch a lot of tennis, but we’re still bringing you the highlights. Like Alex de Minaur entered the top ten with three straight top-ten wins over Taylor Fritz, Novak Djokovic, and Zverev. Grigor Dimitrov defeated short-short enthusiast Holger Rune in Brisbane to capture his first title since 2017! And Andrey Rublev wins Hong Kong, a big improvement from last year when he had two straight first-round...

We watched the 2004 romantic comedy and tennis movie Wimbledon and decided to give you the full spoilery summary as well as our thoughts so you don’t have to watch it yourself.  New to tennis or trying to get a friend into the sport? Check out our ATP 101 and 102 episodes to understand who/what we're talking about. Follow us on Instagram instagram.com/backhandsandcompliments and on Twitter twitter.com/backhandspod.

It’s time to break out the bingo boards and give our predictions, B4 the actual start of the 2024 season 😜. Katie might not be as unhinged this year, but she is definitely clowning with several of her picks. Let’s hope Miranda’s manifesting power comes in strong when it comes to how many losses Novak Djokovic will have. From rivalries to comeback years to the 2024 Paris Olympics, we talk about it all.  New to tennis or trying to get a friend into the sport? Check out our ATP 101 and 102...

And with that, the 2023 season is done and dusted! We go over our Bingo boards and surprise, surprise, Katie’s is still wildly unhinged and Miranda is a manifesting queen. Then we go through some questions to talk about the year. Like which player we became more fond of (and spoiler, you’ll be shocked by Miranda’s answer!) and which celebrity-tennis interaction we enjoyed the most. Katie breaks out the statistics in regards to who has a banger year and yet no one is saying anything about it....

It is what it says on the tin, folks. Listen along as we go into WAY too much detail and rank the entire ATP Top 100 into categories named after Taylor Swift songs. The Tiermaker we used is from @MedvedevMeddler on Twitter! Follow along and rank for yourself! Follow us on Instagram instagram.com/backhandsandcompliments and on Twitter twitter.com/backhandspod. New to tennis or trying to get a friend into the sport? Check out our ATP 101 and 102 episodes to understand who/what we're...

Do you get déjà vu? We do too because this year’s ATP Finals, unfortunately, followed the trend of most of the tournaments this year and we saw Novak Djokovic win…again…yay. But, never fear! We talk about whether Holger Rune should’ve just worn Speedos and if he should write his gummy bears off his taxes. Should Jannik Sinner should have tanked? (Spoiler: for the good of the narrative, the answer is yes. But ethically, no.) Also, has Jannik figured out how to beat Daniil Medvedev indefinitely...

It’s the end of the season, but there is one tournament left-- The ATP Finals! Unfortunately, the ATP decided to screw over our new schedule and start the tournament on a Sunday, so instead of talking about the few matches that have happened, Miranda and Katie take on a much more important task: ranking the outfits at the Nitto ATP Finals Media Night, obviously! Why is everyone dressed to go to their local brewery? Who is the worst dressed? Who is the best? Is Jannik Sinner secretly...

We’ve ended the final Masters 1000 of the season in the basement. Literally. The most important question has been answered! Holger Rune does, in fact, eat gummy bears during matches. Hope you get that golden bag from Harbio, Holger! On the tennis front, at least the boys fought harder against Novak Djokovic, giving him a harder time, but still, not even the beautiful, brown-eyed Bulgarian, Grigor Dimitrov could take him down. Katie revives her Doubles Alley section to talk about all of the...

Two ATP 500 tournaments this week means double the fun! At least for us, because the boys were hitting this week. In Vienna, we had our 13th Stefaniil match and while it lacked the flare of drama, we got a near cradle from Daniil to Stefanos. In the final, Daniil Medvedev’s curse continues and Jannik Sinner captures his fourth title this year. (Four titles for World #4!) In Basel, Felix Auger-Alissame defends his title against Hubi Hurkacz. Miranda gives the lowdown on just how bad Felix’s...

As two Americans, Katie and Miranda weren’t able to watch a lot of the Asian swing, but that doesn’t mean we won’t talk about it! While we both wish Andrey Rublev would have taken home his second Masters 1000 title, we’re happy to see Hubi Hurkacz do his weird close-lipped kiss of the trophy. Ben Shelton hangs up the phone in Aslan Karatsev and takes home his first ATP title and a 500-level one at that! In a moment of nightmare fuel, we think about how bed bugs could be an issue at Paris...

It’s time to talk about our favorite event on the tennis calendar, the Laver Cup! A fun team-style event that is an…exhibition? A serious ATP event? No one is quite sure. Especially Felix Auger-Alissame and Gael Monfils, who got into some ~drama~ during their match. (Or is it just both of them being French?) But it doesn’t matter because Team World absolutely dominated Team Europe. But who cares about the tennis when we can talk about Christopher Eubanks’ soothing voice, John McEnroe probably...

The finale of the 2023 US Open was unfortunately predictable, but this episode isn’t! Miranda and Katie venture away from exclusively talking about men’s singles and celebrate American Coco Gauff for winning her first slam! We focus on the positives of the US Open, like the lack of a certain man we hate, Dominic Striker wanting to dance with somebody, and a great act of sportsmanship. We mourn Matteo Berrettini’s injury again because we saw it live together. We talk about Lacoste being...

We’re back again! After a hiatus because we’re not actually that serious, Miranda and Katie are back to talk about the US Open draw before it starts! Naturally, we’ve waited until the very last second to make our predictions. And surprise, we’re actually in the same room together! We talk about Andrey’s new ATP profile picture, Holger Rune’s lack of odd workout videos, and the exciting potential for a Janlitos (Jannik Sinner & Carlos Alcaraz, for the uninitiated) quarterfinal!  Miranda...

It’s delusion hours, everyone! So, it’s like every other episode? Maybe. We talk about each quarter and who is left in the Wimbledon draw. Miranda and Katie go all in with Matteo and call for an upset. We might also be the only podcast saying Chris Eubanks will win Wimbledon. We also ask the very important question, is Novak Djokovic a vegan or does he just do yoga? Either way, he’s probably eating Hubi Hurkacz. We manifest another quarterfinal for Andrey Rublev and Stefaniil. Then, we move...

We started this podcast six months ago with Tsitsislander, but now it's time for Tsitsidosa. (Although Katie does throw in quite a bit of Tsitsislander.) Before we talk about the relationship between Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa, we talk about Roland Garros. This was recorded a lifetime ago and for that, we apologize. Novak Djokovic won his 23rd slam, whatever, whatever, good job, but there are much more important topics to talk about. Miranda considers the branding of players and...

From asking Gerry to default him to now winning the whole thing, Daniil Medvedev is really the main character. Despite all the rain, this tournament wasn’t gloomy for us. After months without a Stefaniil match, we finally got our favorite matchup. Unfortunately, all the drama is more familial, but there is nothing we love discussing more than the mental and emotional side of tennis. Which means we do break out the star charts. As this is the final Masters on clay for this year, we look...

We get a little more serious this week as we go over the various controversies and misogyny that happened in the last days of Madrid. From Cakegate to the ball crew’s uniforms and the mockery of them, to the silencing of the final two women’s doubles teams, to the alleged rigging in favor of Carlos Alcaraz. As women, it is our responsibility to talk about these problems and shed light on misogyny. It isn’t all doom and gloom, though, Katie talks about the men’s doubles final and Rublanov....

Mercury is in Retrograde and so is Madrid. We’re here for our not-so-regularly scheduled episode to talk less about tennis and more about the multiverse of madness that is tennis and pop culture colliding. Miranda prepared a quiz about the fame and popularity of tennis players in honor of the Met Gala. Katie gives her dream teams for the Laver Cup, including the addition of another team of her favorite oldies. In terms of tennis, because we are a tennis podcast, we discuss Daniil Medvedev’s...

Monte-Carlo truly is the most beautiful tennis tournament, and not just because Andrey Rublev won it this week! We’re back to celebrate Andrey’s win and discuss all the drama, from Daniil Medvedev dragging his not-friend Alexander Zverev to Taylor Fritz beating American clay hater Stefanos Tsitsipas. Also included: half a grid of F1 drivers and Big Babies™️ Jannik Sinner and Holger Rune roughhousing in the sandbox (a.k.a. clay court). New to tennis or trying to get a friend into the sport?...