Alex Theodoridis is the founder of Tennisportalen in Sweden,  where he covers professional tennis as a writer, reporter and podcaster. Alex has covered the Australian Open on site in Melbourne the last four years, along with several other important tournaments around the globe. In this week’s Tennis With An Accent Podcast, Saqib Ali asks Alex about the crazy Monte Carlo Masters in which Fabio Fognini defeated Rafael Nadal and then won the tournament by beating the equally surprising Dusan...

It’s the start of clay season on the ATP Tour. How big a clay season is it? Let’s talk about it as Matt Zemek returns to Tennis With An Accent and joins Saqib Ali to look at the big themes and tension points of the ATP clay season. A central question: How much do Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Dominic Thiem, and Alexander Zverev need to accomplish in the events leading up to Roland Garros? Oh yeah, we also talk about that Federer guy. 🙂 Find Tennis With An Accent on Twitter at...

This week on Tennis With An Accent, Saqib Ali is joined by Louisa Thomas, a published author and contributing writer at The New Yorker magazine, where she has written about tennis for several years. She had written about tennis at Grantland since 2011 before the website closed down. She and Saqib discuss WTA World No. 1 Naomi Osaka, whom she recently interviewed for Vogue Magazine,  and the other players she likes to write about. Ms. Thomas speaks about magazine-based tennis writing, as a...

This week on Tennis With An Accent, Saqib Ali is joined by TWAA contributor Mert Ertunga to talk about the Miami open. The conversation takes a deep dive into Miami champion Ashleigh Barty’s all around game. Barty uses lot of variety compared to her opponent in the final Kristina Pliskova, according to Mert. It’s a fascinating contrast of how players succeed in these modern homogenized conditions of professional tennis. Mert also sheds light into the promising ATP youngsters Denis Shapovalov...

This week on Tennis With An Accent, Saqib Ali is joined by Michael Gallo, a tennis writer and producer at TSN Canada. During his coverage of tennis through the Canadian prism he has covered the likes of Milos Raonic, Eugenie Bouchard, Denis Shapovalov, Felix Auger-Aliassime and now Bianca Andreescu. Tennis Canada is doing something right at the moment and Gallo weighs on the meteoric rise of Bianca Andreescu. He also speaks at length about the tennis boom in Canada when Raonic and Bouchard...

This week on Tennis With An Accent, Saqib Ali is joined by Miguel Seabra, who has worn many hats in his tennis career spanning from 1991 to present day. Currently, he works as a broadcaster for Euro Sport and also serves as the media director at the Estoril Open. In his past life, Miguel has also worked as a professional chair umpire on the ATP tour. On this episode, Miguel breaks down the success of the ATP 250 level tournament as he shares the strategic alignment of the event. He also...

Tennis With An Accent covers the global reality of tennis in various accents, and today’s accent is thoroughly Indian. Podcast host Saqib Ali, who grew up in India, talks to the venerable Indian tennis journalist Rohit Brijnath, who writes for The Straits Times in Singapore, at straitstimes.com. Brijnath has covered the Australian Open for the past 15 years and has covered multiple Wimbledons and French Opens in earlier years. He has traveled the world many times over, giving Indian tennis...

Last week, the Tennis With An Accent Podcast provided an in-depth look at a specific aspect of professional tennis: the complicated and tangled world of the challenger circuit and junior tennis. This week, the TWAA Podcast acquires very different dimensions. In a serious but relaxed conversation, host Saqib Ali welcomes TWAA contributor Briana Foust back to the show to discuss both the WTA and ATP Tours. Briana provides insights on more than a dozen players as the tennis world catches its...

The war between the ITF and the ATP is felt less at the major tournaments than in the lower tiers of professional tennis. This is a very complicated subject, and a single conversation won’t resolve all of its problems, but Tennis With An Accent wants to begin this conversation and continue it over the course of 2019. The new Tennis With An Accent Podcast welcomes tennis blogger Paul Timmons, who writes about the ITF Transition Tour, the Challenger tours, junior tennis, futures tennis, and...

Novak Djokovic is the king of men’s tennis after his victory at the Australian Open, and few people do a better job of covering Novak Djokovic than Saša Ozmo of SportKlub in Serbia. Tennis With An Accent welcomes Saša back to our podcast.  Saša speaks with Saqib Ali about Djokovic and various other ATP topics in this show. Saša originally joined the TWAA podcast last June during Roland Garros. A lot has changed since then — for Djokovic and the ATP Tour as a whole. It is a great time to gain...

Alex Macpherson, a staff writer for WTATennis.com, joins Saqib Ali to review the women’s Australian Open at Tennis With An Accent. The women’s Australian Open was merely the latest example of something the tennis world has seen a lot over the last two years: The WTA side of a major tournament was much more compelling, over the course of two full weeks, than the ATP side. The 2019 women’s Australian Open started slowly in the first two rounds but then roared into form in the third round and...

It’s the second week of a major tournament, the 2019 Australian Open. On the latest Tennis With An Accent Podcast, get perspective from a man who has endured that unique cauldron of pressure. Tim Mayotte made the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1982 and the Australian Open in 1983. He knows what it is like to play in the second week of a major. Tim played on the ATP Tour for over a decade and rose as high as No. 7 in the ATP rankings in 1988. A teacher, an author, and someone with plenty to say...

One of the foremost chroniclers of the story of tennis over the past 45 years returns to the Tennis With An Accent Podcast to preview the 2019 Australian Open. Steve Flink is the author of “The Greatest Tennis Matches Of All Time,” a must-have for tennis fans who want to study the history of the sport. He has been reporting on tennis since 1974. Steve applies his knowledge of tennis history and his far-ranging awareness of both tours to this preview of the 2019 Australian Open with host Saqib...

The Tennis With An Accent holiday history series continues. On Christmas Day, we presented a lot of the under-the-radar names and faces from the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. This week, our New Year’s Day tennis history podcast focuses on the classics. Host Saqib Ali welcomes TWAA contributor Andrew Burton for a look at the matches many people view as the two greatest Open Era men’s tennis matches ever played at major tournaments. Andrew explores the 1980 Wimbledon final between Bjorn Borg...

It is said that the winners write the history books. The Christmas edition of the Tennis With An Accent Podcast tries to study and appreciate tennis history from a different vantage point. We can talk about superstars and icons anytime, but tennis — like any sport — is so much more than the names we all remember. This week, TWAA contributor Mert Ertunga joins Matt Zemek for an extended conversation which explores “the other players” in tennis history who didn’t win eight or more major...

Do you remember television “crossover” episodes when two shows would merge into one during the same week? This week’s Tennis With An Accent Podcast is very much about tennis, but it is also a crossover episode with another Radio Influence podcast. Jim Fannin is a longtime tennis coach who currently works as a consultant to athletes across numerous sports. He is also the host of his own Radio Influence podcast, The Jim Fannin Show. He has a website of accumulated books and instructional CDs at...

Saqib Ali interviews the two-time Roland Garros finalist, former Stockholm tournament director, and present-day tennis entrepreneur Robin Soderling about a range of topics. It’s a conversation that die-hard tennis fans will greatly enjoy. Soderling carries special significance in the hearts of modern-day tennis fans, due to his place in history as a player who authored two of the most significant upsets in the sport: his 2009 Roland Garros win over Rafael Nadal and his 2010 Roland Garros...

Skip Schwarzman attended the ATP Finals in London last month and filed three stories for Tennis With An Accent. Host Matt Zemek, filling in for Saqib Ali this week, engages Skip in a three-part conversation. Part I: Skip’s up-close observations of the ATP Finals. What is it like to watch a tennis match from the nosebleed seats and from a courtside seat five rows behind the players’ boxes? What separates the experience of watching a match in person from the experience of watching a match on...

The 2018 tennis season is over but the conversation continues at Tennis With An Accent. Our offseason podcast series begins with a set of reflections. Saqib Ali and Matt Zemek start with the last Davis Cup, which ended in France on Sunday. Croatia captured its second Davis Cup championship, with Marin Cilic winning two matches. Saqib and Matt try to make sense of why the Davis Cup ended and why certain arguments convinced enough of the power brokers in tennis to change their ways. You might...

Australian doubles legend and tennis analyst Mark Woodforde returns to the Tennis With An Accent Podcast. Mark talks to Saqib Ali about numerous topics in a wide-ranging conversation. The discussion begins with an evaluation of London as the site for the ATP Finals. Woodforde speaks from the perspective of a world-class doubles player by emphasizing the prominence of doubles in the current London setup. He integrates doubles into the evolving debate about whether the ATP Finals should change...

Last week, Darren Cahill stepped away from coaching WTA World No. 1 Simona Halep in order to spend more time with his family. Cahill’s coaching career isn’t over, but this marks a good time to consider what has made him such an effective and important coach — for Halep, yes, but also for Lleyton Hewitt and Andre Agassi. Saqib and Matt talk about Halep’s willingness to trust Cahill in difficult moments, which branches into a larger exploration of the art of coaching and the strength of...

This week on Tennis With An Accent, Saqib Ali is joined by UK based tennis writer and commentator Ravi Ubha. He is broadcaster who has worked on various world feeds and networks, is a CNN contributor, worked for Premier League Productions, a writer for CNN and the New York Times, and has his LTA Level 1 certification. The guys talk at length about the Nitto ATP Finals in London, the breakout win of Russia’s Karen Khachanov in Paris last week, whether Novak Djokovic is closing on the...

Late in the 2018 tennis season, the Tennis With An Accent podcast covers a wide range of topics on both the WTA and ATP Tours. Co-hosts Saqib Ali and Matt Zemek begin with a discussion of the just-completed WTA Finals in Singapore. Elina Svitolina’s championship is a primary point of focus, as is the unpredictability which continues to define the year-end tournament in women’s tennis. What meanings and conclusions can be derived from an exciting and volatile week? Saqib and Matt explore that...

This week on Tennis With An Accent, Saqib Ali is joined by ATP World Feed Commentator, Nick Lester. This retired player turned broadcaster chats with Saqib about the toughness of the fall swing of the season, it’s importance leading into January’s Australian Open, the relevance of the speed of some courts and how they need to be made quicker, some of the guys who have caught his eye this season, whether there’s concern about Roger Federer following his last loss, the greatness that is Novak...

This week on Tennis With An Accent, Saqib Ali is joined by writer Ed Salmon, who talks about the significance of the WTA year end finale in the tennis calendar and the contenders for the remaining spots for Singapore. Elina Svitolina is another topic in this discussion as the Russian has had an anticlimactic last few months of the season where she lost lot of weight physically and confidence in her game. The guys discuss the potential of the mouth watering matchups in Singapore. Ed weighs...