...And the Rest

An interview with Patrick Kypson, plus more on Eubanks, Davis, Butorac, Cincinnati, and the close race for third place.

This has been a decently newsy week of tennis, albeit mostly chock full o’ smaller stories, so I thought it would be a good chance to do a round-up covering a bunch of disparate things.

Most of this will be for subscribers-only, but I wanted to put one item before the paywall since it’s a bit of a clarification from a recent post on Bounces: my dive into the controversial betting company 1xBet and its deepening presence in tennis.

Bottom Dollar: The Problems With 1xBet in Tennis

Though the 1xBet logo has been seen on advertising walls at Billie Jean King Cup matches in recent months, it actually sometimes only virtually super-imposed on the walls on the main-angle broadcast camera, as revealed when the side camera shows the same wall from a different angle.

Here’s an example from Iga Swiatek’s match last week in Poland (one of the many countries where 1xBet is not legally allowed to operate).

I have seen similar technology used for advertisements in other sports, but hadn’t ever observed it in a tennis broadcast before this example. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and found Davis Cup has previously done the same thing with Stake, their betting sponsor, which has its own controversies (though this week in Bologna the Stake logo appears to be a full-time part of the advertising walls).

I got a lot of appreciative notes and comments about my 1xBet investigation, which I appreciate, but to answer a question that sometimes accompanied those nice words: no, I don’t necessarily think anything is going to change because of what I wrote. I believe in doing journalism for journalism’s sake when there’s an issue that deserves uncovering and exposing, but I also know that the priorities that put those 1xBet deals in place to begin with—profit and greed, namely—are powerful ones.

I’ve had several pieces I’ve written in my career that have led to action, investigation, and reconsideration by The Powers That Be in tennis, but it’s not something I expect to have happen happen reliably, even when the problems seem egregious. But I still think it’s important to discuss these things, and I appreciate all of your support helping me continue my mission here.

To support my work here and read the rest of this post, please subscribe to Bounces. There’s lots to feast upon below the paywall of this one:

• Passions running high in Italy

• Good news from Cincinnati and New York

• Farewells to American giants of varied stature.

• Extremely strong takes on the Gilligan’s Island theme song

• Debates about who had the third-best season in men’s tennis.

And most substantially—and up first—a video interview with Patrick Kypson, the rapidly-rising North Carolinian who secured the U.S. wildcard into the fast-approaching 2026 Australian Open.

Enjoy!