Served 5 Setter

Iga's new coach, Murray's new shoe company and Alcaraz's Miami Open mini-meltdown.

Megan Fernandez

Apr 03, 2026

Welcome to your weekly 5 Setter, an express roundup of all things racquet sports with Producer Mike. In this episode:

Iga Swiatek Announces New Coach
Andy Murray Gets Into the Shoe Game
Alcaraz’s Coach Talks Mid-Match Mentality
2026 Monte Carlo Withdrawals
Charleston Signals Possible Charlotte WTA Finals Success
Tiebreak Trivia

Click below to watch today’s 5 Setter on YouTube, and come back here for this week’s bonus stories.

Rackets and Racquets on Apple TV

Jon Hamm in *Your Friends and Neighbors* on Apple TV

Season 2 of our favorite tennis show, Your Friends and Neighbors, premieres tonight on Apple TV. Jon Hamm plays Coop, a hedge fund manager who loses his job and starts robbing his wealthy neighbors to maintain his family’s lifestyle. That includes a $9,000 tennis coach.

Coop turns out to be a good thief. But he’s a better tennis player.

For those of us who have suffered through painfully bad tennis on screen, that matters. Tennis is hard to fake. Stiff groundstrokes and a serve learned like choreography are unwatchable to us.

Hamm, a massive tennis fan and rec player, gets it right. His character played tennis at Princeton University, and he works out his stress with a ball machine session and tries to coach his daughter. Hamm’s racket-head speed is there. He opens his hips at the right time. Spacing isn’t always perfect, but that’s realistic.

“He’s probably a 3.5, almost 4.0. He knew what he was doing,” says Gus Treyz, director of racquets at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in New York’s Westchester County, where most of the tennis, restaurant and pool scenes were filmed. It was also once the location of a Beyoncé video.

Treyz served as the show’s tennis consultant—and he’s the one who drilled a ball from off camera into Hamm’s groin in season 1.

Treyz also coached Isabel Gravitt, who plays Coop’s daughter. She wants to follow in Coop’s footsteps and play for Princeton. Gravitt is not a tennis player, and her physique and backhand aren’t convincing for a D1 commit, but Treyz got her hitting cleanly enough that tennis fans won’t cringe.

Bad news, though—there won’t be any tennis in season 2. Rain interrupted the tennis shoots at Sleepy Hollow this time.

We’ll cross our fingers for tennis to return in season 3, which has been greenlit. Sending Served merch to the wardrobe department now.

Making Their Marks: Clay Movers This Week

Checking in on the clay events taking place on four continents this week, here are players who have impressed.

Iva Jovic at the Charleston Open. It’s no secret that we at Served are big Jovic fans. We are excited to see how her fearless baseline game and tactical maturity translate to the dirt this spring, her first full clay season on the WTA Tour. So far, so good—Jovic won her first two matches in Charleston in straight sets. She plays Anna Kalinskaya in the quarterfinal today, then heads to Europe defending only 212 points. Playing the Fed Cup qualifier in Belgium next week, then WTA 1000s in Madrid and Rome, she could go into the French Open ranked even higher than her current No. 16.

Rest of the draw: Six of the top eight seeds remain in the quarterfinals. Madison Keys hasn’t dropped a set, while top seed and defending champion Jessica Pegula has survived in a pair of three-setters.

Roman Andres Burruchaga at the U.S. Clay Court Championships in Houston. There are no Cinderella stories in the NCAA Final Four this weekend, but there’s one in Houston—the 24-year-old Argentine Burruchaga. He entered the main draw as a lucky loser from qualifying and got the first Top 40 win of his career by eliminating No. 5 seed Brandon Nakashima 6–4, 4–6, 6–2 yesterday. He plays Learner Tien today in the quarterfinals. Soccer fans might know the name—Burruchaga’s father, Jorge, famously scored the game-winning goal for Argentina in the 1986 World Cup.

Rest of the draw: Top seed Ben Shelton hit 21 aces in a win over Zhang Zhizhen, and NBA star Kevin Durant attended Frances Tiafoe’s match yesterday. Top four seeds Shelton, Tiafoe, Tommy Paul and Tien all play the quarterfinals today.

Luciano Darderi at the Grand Prix Hassan II in Morocco. The top seed has avoided the early-rounds bloodbath that took out six of the top eight seeds. Darderi won the 250 Chile Open in February and sits at a career-high No. 18. He’s one to watch heading into the bigger clay tournaments. The Italian plays either Corentin Moutet or Marco Trungelliti in the semifinal tomorrow.

Rest of the draw: Like his fellow Spanish Next Genner Martin Landaluce in Miami, 19-year-old Rafael Jodar scored a big win, this one over Tomas Machac, currently No. 50 but ranked No. 20 last year.

Emiliana Arango at the Copa Colsanitas in Colombia. The local hope is still alive with a chance to win her first title. She’s ranked No. 105 and plays Vavara Lepchenko today.

Rest of the draw: Top seed Marie Bouzkova remains, but most of the other seeds are out, including two-time defending champion Maria Camila Osorio from Colombia.

New Balls, Please

Andy hit a nerve with his rant on Tuesday’s show about the “dog shit” Dunlop balls he used at an exhibition in Brazil recently. If you missed it, here you go.

Several Chuckers commented about a noticeable drop in ball quality over the last few years. These came from locations around the world. A sampling:

“We are playing at a club tennis in South Africa. After Covid, the quality of the balls has been inconsistent. Now the balls are unplayable, no power, fluffs up after 3 shots. Please Dunlop. Do something about your balls. It used to be the best tennis balls prior to 2019.”
“All balls have taken a massive dip in quality, especially since Covid. We used to use Head Tour balls (Penn in the U.S.) at our club but they now fluff up immediately and become unusable.”
“I’ve had the same experience with Dunlop. First time for me was in Indonesia and I thought they were counterfeits. But then it was like that with every can. UNUSABLE!”

How did we get here? Let’s review some milestones in the great ball debate.

2023

Zizou Bergs posted on Instagram:
“I think it’s time to look carefully at the fact that many players are getting wrist injuries, which could possibly be prevented by not changing the balls every week.”
Stan Wawrinka posted on X:
“Four weeks – four different balls. When are tournaments going to listen to players??”
Novak Djokovic said in a press conference:
“Yeah, this inconsistency is an issue, and that’s what most of the players, and also of course including myself, we complain about. I think there needs to be a bit more consistency with the balls so that we avoid any kind of issues with wrists and elbows and shoulders.”
Taylor Fritz on X:
“Have been dealing w wrist issues since beginning of USO series cause of ball changes we went 3 different balls in 3 weeks.”

2024

The ATP and WTA announced a “strategic review” of the balls “with the aim of increasing quality and consistency of balls during tournament swings from 2025 onward.”

Zverev, a member of the ATP Players Council, said he had personally investigated by calling ball manufacturers.
“Because of Covid, the companies tried to cut costs, and they’re using a different rubber material now. It makes the tennis balls between 30 percent and 60 percent slower on average.”
Daniil Medvedev beat Matteo Arnaldi in Shanghai but wrote on the camera:
“Nice balls.”

2025

Aryna Sabalenka posted damning evidence of low-quality Dunlop balls.

Sabalenka Aryna@SabalenkaA

25min vs new Crazy difference 👀

9:54 AM · Feb 7, 2025 · 804K Views

211 Replies · 568 Reposts · 13.9K Likes

Defector ran a story, “Has the Tennis Balls Problem Gotten Worse?” by Giri Nathan, who interviewed Jeff Bardsley, the vice president of marketing at Penn, and wrote:

“Bardsley conceded that the company did navigate challenges from mid-2020 through the end of 2023, when demand for tennis balls spiked due to the increase in recreational tennis, but production itself was compromised due to the pandemic. Other factors Bardsley mentioned included additional demand for rubber, as the sport of padel surged in Europe, and the freight issues that many companies faced during the pandemic.”

The ATP announced it was centralizing the process of choosing ball suppliers in cooperation with tournaments, but pointed out that changes will take a couple of years to implement because tournaments had to honor existing contracts with ball manufacturers.

@atptour

ATP Tour on Instagram: "Consistency is key 🔐

We’ve been work…

Zverev again, in Rome:
“The balls are much slower this year. I don’t know what they’ve done new with the balls.”
Ellen Perez, on her podcast:
“Me and Jessica Pegula were talking about this. We’ve consulted with a lot of the players, and honestly thought these were a bad batch of balls for the hard-court swing.”
Alexander Bublik posted the receipts:

Oleg S.@AnnaK_4ever

Bublik: "High quality balls from a Grand Slam tournament. After five minutes of practicing a slice 😂" (via his Telegram account)

4:22 PM · Dec 17, 2025 · 345K Views

37 Replies · 91 Reposts · 2.89K Likes

2026

The ATP released an update:

“Following major progress in 2025, ball centralisation will advance further in 2026, with almost all tournament swings aligned on ball manufacturers to enhance playing conditions and reduce variability for players.”

Daniil Medvedev called a supervisor to the court mid-match in Rotterdam to complain about Head Tour XT balls and claim they aren’t even round. After the match, he said:
“These balls are horrible. Please delete this (effing) balls from this (effing) life.”
Alex de Minaur backed him up:
“I have actually been quite frustrated with the balls in practice, which is not like me. I do get what Daniil says about the balls. They are definitely not my favorite. I don’t think they are anyone’s favorite balls. They are very difficult to control.”

Indian Wells switched from Penn to Dunlop balls. Tournament director Tommy Haas explained:

“All the players know that when they come here, this is a rather sandy, rough hard court surface. That means the balls can be inflated a bit more, but in general, we enjoy how the conditions are. This year we are playing with the Dunlop ball, which means the players have the opportunity to play with the same ball at the Australian Open, Indian Wells, and the Miami Open. Hopefully, that will generate less stress on their bodies.”

Fritz discussed it while playing video games on Twitch.
“I think that the quality of the ball has dropped exponentially. On fast courts, the Dunlop works very well, but on slow courts it’s awful. Seven or nine games is too many. The other day, at 3–3 in the first set, I was looking at the ball and thinking, ‘How are we playing professional tennis with this?’ It’s ridiculous.”

Q&Andy Recap

This week, Andy fielded fan questions about clay courts, and we debuted a new segment called Random Question. First: Which ATP player would Andy not fight?

📮Submit a question by emailing askandy@servedmediagroup.com or send it through our website or social media.

Love All Recap

Kim and Blair look back at the Miami Open and talk about the adjustment to red clay, and Blair shares on-the-ground insights from Houston, including why players like Frances Tiafoe love the event. Kim reflects on her 2005 Sunshine Double run and the superstitions that fueled it. The episode also dives into Aryna Sabalenka’s new mental edge, coaching and relationship dynamics on tour, and David Goffin’s retirement.

Tiebreak Trivia

In today’s 5 Setter, Producer Mike discussed the regional popularity of women’s tennis in North and South Carolina, demonstrated by the Charleston Open, which has attracted the best WTA players in the world for over 50 years. Many legends have won the title multiple times, including Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Gabriela Sabatini, Conchita Martinez, Justin Henin and Serena Williams. Which of those players went on to win the French Open the same year?

Answer: Evert (1974, 1975, 1985), Navratilova (1982), Graf (1987, 1993), Henin (2003, 2005) and Williams (2013), proving that Charleston results have predictive value for Roland Garros.

📝 We’ll be back Tuesday with a new episode. In the meantime, join us on Substack to connect with other Chuckers and Served’s staff about the latest news in tennis.