Europe Calling
On Roland Garros, Rome, and...Róa?
Hello Bounces folks!
Three very different items for you this Saturday:
Voyage
First, some exciting Bounces programming news: I am delighted to share that I am a few hours away from boarding the first of a pair of flights which should eventually land me in Paris some time on Sunday, ready to hit the ground running when French Open qualifying begins on Monday next week at Roland Garros.
This will be my second Grand Slam event that I’m traveling to cover primarily for Bounces, following the Australian Open four months ago. That Grand Slam debut was a big success here at Bounces, I think, measured both by all the work I was proud to be able to do during the event, and also for the thousands of you who subscribed to Bounces during that tournament—and the hundreds who joined at a paid level (which is what makes these trips and the work I do here possible and viable).
If you haven’t taken the Bounces leap yet and have been considering it, there’s probably not a better time than now to get a paid subscription for a whole raft of Bounces output, with both the French Open coming up and Wimbledon (where I will also be) close on its heels less than a month later. (And thanks to the unexpectedly big number of you who already subscribed earlier this week to read my review of the new Carlos Alcaraz Netflix docuseries).
As usual, roughly half of Bounces posts during these events will be for paid subscribers only, so you’ll only be getting half the story on a free subscription. Only about 11 percent of Bounces subscribers are at a paid level, and I’d of course love for that number to tick upward over these coming weeks.
One FYI: In addition to new posts, all older Bounces posts older than 30 days are now paywalled by default here, so if you ever want to peruse the Bounces archives, that will require a subscription as well.
Tutta l’Italia
The timings of my flights, hopefully, should allow me to catch both Italian Open finals this weekend from the Foro Italico in Rome, which is pretty exciting because they should both be great.
On the women’s side, Coco Gauff is into her second straight WTA 1000 final on clay, and will face Italy’s sweetheart Jasmine Paolini. Gauff has a great record in finals (9-2), but Paolini did win their meeting last month on the clay of Stuttgart, so I have a tough time calling this one. It would be a big win for either; stakes are probably higher for Paolini because she has so many ranking points expiring soon from her stunning runs to last year’s French Open and Wimbledon finals.
But I admit I’m feeling even more primed for the men’s final on Sunday, which pits Carlos Alcaraz against Jannik Sinner, who has reached the final in Rome in his very first tournament back from suspension. It’s the biggest clay court final of Sinner’s career so far, and it comes against his biggest rival.
I had the best possible prep for this rematch, I think: the Sinner-Alcaraz rivalry is the subject of the forthcoming book Changeover by the wonderful wordsmith Giri Nathan; I had the chance to read an advance copy of in recent days and absolutely loved it.
Seeing as his two subjects were due to meet again, I reached out to Giri to get his take on Sinner’s big return, which has seen him picking up where he left off after the top of the men’s game had seemed in disarray without him.
Here’s what Giri sent over for Bounces:
Should we be attaching an asterisk to any big ATP accomplishment over the last three months? Were these “Mickey Mouse” titles, to use the sports troll's term of art? They were won in an artificially friendly environment, because Jannik Sinner wasn't around to contest them. The world No. 1 was serving the three-month suspension that he accepted in a settlement with the World Anti-Doping Agency, concluding a doping saga that began with positive tests for the anabolic steroid clostebol in March 2024.
And because he is Jannik Sinner, master of the emotional reset, he arrived in Rome in an all-black kit and simply continued what he was doing before the suspension: beating his opponents senseless. His 6-0, 6-1 win over Casper Ruud in the quarterfinal was as savage a rout as you'll ever see between two top-ten players. Ruud described it as "next-level shit" and admitted he even found it a little "fun."
Sinner then survived a red-lining Tommy Paul in the semifinal to set up a delectable final against Carlos Alcaraz. I will concede that I'm more invested in the Sinner-Alcaraz rivalry than most, because I wrote a whole book about it. (It's called Changeover, preorder it if you like.) But narratively speaking, it's hard to envision a better possible way for Jannik Sinner to announce his return to the office: fighting his archrival for a huge title in front of a frenzied home crowd in Rome.
Giri’s mention of Tommy Paul is cause for me to addend that he did both something very un-American this week (reaching the semifinals on the clay of Rome for a second straight year, the first American man to do that since Pete Sampras in 1994)…and also something very American (getting his pickup truck repossessed after missing payments on it).
What the Hell Just Happened?
The other event happening this weekend that has my attention—as folks who know me can probably guess—is the final of the 69th annual Eurovision Song Contest, being held Saturday night in Basel, Switzerland. It’s being held in the same arena where Basel’s ATP 500 tournament is held—with lots of jokes about Roger Federer being made by the hosts, so Eurovision is not quite as far afield from tennis as usual.
So if you’re up for it to finish this three-part dispatch, all aboard for a detour away from the tennis to Eurovisionland:
Eurovision remains a nonpareil glittery spectacle for folks who like sparkly things, accessible pop music, and/or consistently complex geopolitics.
I could happily write full essays about the contents and context of each of the 26 Eurovision finalists, but with some restraint, here’s a few standouts in the hunt for what feels like one of the least predictable Eurovision races in recent memory.
This will be in order of how they’ll perform in the running order today (the final is at 9 pm Saturday in Basel, which is 3 pm on the American east coast, streaming stateside on Peacock):
3. Estonia — “Espresso Macchiato” by Tommy Cash
Tommy Cash is an Estonian performance artist who has chocked his three minutes full of references to every Italian stereotype imaginable—and Italians, rather than being offended, are drinking it up, making “Espresso Macchiato” a big hit around Italy. He’s not exactly a stellar vocalist, to say the least, but he has the best lyric of this year’s contest: “Life is like spaghetti: it’s hard until you make it.”
4. Israel — “New Day Will Rise” by Yuval Raphael
Sadly Eurovision hasn’t offered the same easy escapism it once did for much this decade, with wars in both Ukraine and Gaza looming large in the background and foreground of the contest. This year’s Israeli entry is sung by Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre in October 2023.
As the bombing of Gaza continues, Israel’s continued participation has been hugely controversial, to say the least. Their presence also hugely affects the competitive outlook, since they, like 2022 winners Ukraine, have an ardent base of support right now that will vote for them regardless of their song. Despite massive protests, last year’s Israeli entry came second overall in the televote; it’s unclear how sentiment may or may not have shifted over 12 months.
10. Iceland — “Róa” by Væb
Most of the Eurovision subject matter isn’t nearly as serious, thankfully, including this pair of Icelandic brothers dressed in silver, singing about rowing a boat over Celtic-style fiddling. Væb is pronounced like what these peppy Minecraft-loving youngsters are: a “vibe.”
13. Finland — “Ich Komme” by Erika Vikman
While other acts like Lithuania and Armenia have sounds more planted in the rock genre, Erika Vikman is the rockstar of this year’s contest, without a doubt. She gets the arena pumping like no one else in the contest, with a stage presence that matches up with anyone else in the competition—just her and microphone stands of various sizes. Finland one has the best shot to win of anything in the first half, I think (I’m not really buying the Austria hype, honestly; I just don’t think people will enjoy a voice that’s quite that high-pitched).
19. Switzerland — "Voyage" by Zoë Më
Switzerland automatically qualified for the final as the host (and in Eurovision tradition, it’s the host because it’s last year’s winner), and when it performed in a preview during the semifinals it caught me hugely off-guard. I think the minimalism here will really stand out (and I think it could beat the much more hyped French-language ballad from France). The filtering gave me Portrait of a Lady on Fire throwbacks, which is always a nice thing for an arthouse fan.
20. Malta — “Serving” by Miriana Conte
The silliest controversies around this year’s Eurovision involved Miriana Conte, whose song was originally called “Kant,” which means “Singing” in Maltese but was deployed for…its English homophone properties. After she caused a stir by winning the Maltese selection, the European Broadcasting Union decided she couldn’t use the word at Eurovision. They did, however, at least let her keep her big bouncy balls for the finish.
23. Sweden — “Bara Bada Bastu” by KAJ
51 years after ABBA scored their first win, Sweden has again become a Eurovision powerhouse over the past 15 years, with three wins—and possibly a fourth later today, if the oddsmakers are correct. After an assembly line conveyor belt of polished pop in recent years for Sweden, this year’s Melodifestivalen selected something far more unexpected: a trio of Finnish comedians (from the western part of Finland where Swedish is a prevalent language) singing about the joys of saunas. Will the music experts across Europe who make up the Eurovision juries—a 50 percent component of the scoring designed to filter out the silly chaff—let this through? I could see it going either way.
26. Albania — “Zjerm” by Shkodra Elektronike
The cool-kid, hipster pick in this Eurovision cycle has been Albania, who have taken their reliable ethnic sound and infused it with some pretty undeniably cool beats and cooler aura. There’s a lot of hope for this one to do well—if nothing else because a trip to Tirana next year would be a welcome break for budgets who dread shuttling back and forth between Sweden and Switzerland.
There’s a whole lot more I didn’t cover—a guy from Eiffel 65 for San Marino, Latvian women who grow tails, the British flirting with another last place—but I hope you all can check out the show to see it all!
Thanks for reading Bounces! See you from Europe! -Ben
Tommy Paul having his pickup truck repossessed is the stuff of country music, but somehow I think the context of his missing a payment was probably different than why it happens to most Americans.
You underestimated the world's appetite for queer sopranos!
I was watching on BBC, and after Austria just eked out the win over Israel, I liked Graham Norton's understated "All of Europe just breathed a sigh of relief..."