Bouncing Along at the U.S. Open

On the U.S. Open Day 10 Matches to Watch, and orange you glad you subscribed to Bounces?

NEW YORK — A quick programming note after a slow day at the U.S. Open.

Today my bouncing baby Bounces turns 11 months old—since it’s an infant its age can still be counted in months—and I wanted to pause during this wall-to-wall U.S. Open coverage to thank the village of all y’all who have helped me raise it so far. This is still a one-man operation for me behind the scenes, but it’s your support and subscriptions which have kept Bounces going and growing.

Last week Substack sent me an exciting update that Bounces and I have earned one of the orange checkmark badges you may have seen around the network; these badges indicate that the number of paid subscribers to a Substack has reached four digits, which is a big milestone as Bounces grows toward becoming as sturdily self-sustainable as possible—no small feat for an independent, ad-free media publication which is still less than a year old.

It says “thousands” but it really just means four digits so far, since it’s still under 2,000.

So thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who are among those ranks for keeping Bounces going as we come down the homestretch of this first lap around the tour.

I also wanted to share—which I’ve seen lots of other Substackers do, but which I hadn’t yet done before—some of the very nice memo line notes a few of you have written as your reasons for subscribing, which have been lovely to read as they’ve rolled in this year.

A couple housekeeping notes on subscriptions, while on the topic: I can promise that prices for Bounces subscriptions are going to stay the same here for another year; in this world of inflation, I already appreciate everyone’s generosity and think the prices are hopefully fair for the amount of output I’ve been doing on Bounces.

But I did want to revamp one of the tiers a bit. Bounces has had four tiers of subscription: free ($0), monthly ($7 a month), yearly ($60 aka $5 a month) and “founding” ($120 a year aka $10 a month). That “founding” tier, which previously had no particular extra benefits, has been renamed “Double Bounce” and will come with at least one new perk: monthly video hangouts with myself and other backers to discuss any and all tennis topics. Timing and technology TBD on how we’ll do it, but the first one will be later this month (September) after the U.S. Open, and I think it will be a lot of fun.

(Also, if you have other suggestions for new Bounces activities—in person meet-ups at/around a 2026 tournament, maybe?—I’d love to hear them.)

So if you haven’t yet subscribed to Bounces at any of the paid levels and have been considering it, I would still very much appreciate your support as we round into the home stretch of this first year and this first U.S. Open together. And I hope if you’re already on board, you can confirm to any folks considering making the leap that it’s been worthwhile so far.

Onto the tennis, which honestly was forgettable today. It was a day of lopsided routs on-court at the U.S. Open, including Naomi Osaka clobbering an out-of-sorts Coco Gauff. Tumaini Carayol and I discussed it all on the latest episode of No Challenges Remaining.

But tomorrow holds a lot of promise, we optimists hope! So beyond the paywall below, in-depth looks at the four singles quarterfinals on the schedule for Tuesday at the U.S. Open, plus one bonus doubles match (I bet you can guess which one!)

Thanks again for subscribing to Bounces!