Emptying the Australian Open Notebook

Scams, gay baiting, donuts, political questions, Murder on the Dancefloor and more at the year's first tennis major.

After a lot of exhaustion from long days in Melbourne, a bit of jet lag from the trek back home, and a lot of sleep and rest¹, I’m delighted to be back at the Bounces home desk to bring you the last lingering line items from Melbourne in our traditional post-major notebook dump.

As much as I needed the rest, on some level I probably also sensed that your inbox could use a break from me for a bit, too, after I’d sent out 23 Bounces dispatches in 22 days, plus all the chat threads and podcasts and whatnot.

But the recent relative silence was, of course, blanketed with immense gratitude. It’s been a rough few weeks on the media landscape, particularly as a native Washingtonian, and it’s had me thinking a lot about what the future can and cannot be in this embattled profession.

One phrase I read recently particularly resonated: there’s no such thing as “independent” media. All media is dependent on something, or someone, for its success and survival; your future is only as solid as that support is, even if the owner is a guy worth $234 billion.

Here at Bounces, I am solely dependent on you, the readers and subscribers, to keep this place going. I’m very happy to report that numbers kept ticking upwards during this Australian Open, including breaking into five digits for the first time on total subscriber numbers.

What makes the work I do possible, of course, is the paid subscriptions, which make up about 13 percent of the total here. I want to keep going and growing at Bounces, and in order to do that, I need to continue growing that base of support.

So if you’re enjoying Bounces, I hope you can join us on the other side of the paywalls, including for this post, where you can read all sorts of the various 2026 Australian thoughts and Melbourne miscellany which filled my quokka-covered notebook.

The notebook was a prize for coming in second at QuiP’s live event at SporcleCon last year).

That happy quokka held a lot within his pages: there’s 22 items in here, totaling over 7,200 words. Maybe I should have split this into two parts, but I felt like I’ve kept y’all waiting long enough that I didn’t want to delay gratification any further, so I am giving you the full platter now for you to chew on at your own pace.

In order:

• The Australian Open’s Exponentially Empty $10 Million Promise

• Naomi Osaka Causes All That Conversation

• The Early Bird Gets the…Donut

• Taking the Gay Bait

• Anastasia Potapova Couldn’t Have Said It Better Herself

• Bernie and the Billionaire: Tomic discusses playing Bill Ackman for the first time

• Meetin’ Keaton Hance, Australian Open boys’ finalist

• The Finest of Them All: the Fines Lists Have a Surprising Leader.

• Pokémon Go to the Australian Open

• ESPN WTF = Extracting Seriously Pricy New Watching-Tennis Fees

• If the Shoe Fits…Find It for Matteo Arnaldi

• All Mixed Down: Mixed Doubles Reverts to Irrelevance

• Half of Tennis Media Was Pointless…

• 25 Years Later, a Rare Sighting of Jennifer Capriati

• Red Light Special: the Net Posts Shine Brighter Than Ever

• Players Go to College to Get More Knowledge; College Rules Go to Jupiter to Get More Stupider

• Let’s Settle the Margaret Court Case Already

• Politics and Sports Will Forever Mix: There’s Always Been Blood in the Water

• Jay Chou and a Close Call with China

• Walk This Way: Reimagining the Rod Laver Arena Court Entrances

• Trusty If Rusty: The Signs Remain the Same

• The Rights Stuff: Player YouTube Channels Cause Challenges

To read all of this—a veritable magazine’s worth of topics—please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben