In the sixth episode of the Netflix documentary series Break Point, Ajla Tomljanovic, a female tennis player who has spent most of the past decade in the top 100 of the world rankings, stretches herself on an exercise mat in a drab training room after a match. The figure lying on the top is reflected. She will reach the 2022 Wimbledon quarterfinals. Her father Ratko stretches his hamstrings. Ratko received a congratulatory phone call from his sister and from 18-time major champion turned idol turned mentor Chris Evert. After that, Mr. Ratko announces that it’s time for the dreaded ice bath. “By the way,” Tomljanovic once asked, “Do you have a room?” Shortly after her daughter reached the final eight of the world’s premier tennis tournament, Ratko’s appearance on Booking.com extended her stay in London.
This is not your typical sports documentary content, but the life of a professional tennis player. Orbiting the globe for most of the year with only a small circle of coaches, physiotherapists, and possibly parents, they alone manage the bureaucratic frustration that other elite sports might entrust to agents and managers. I carry it on my back. While some tournaments have surprised even themselves beyond hotel accommodations, most events just endure the standard woes of the circuit, and they remember their standings week after week. I will let you. Taylor Fritz, the current top-ranked U.S. men’s player, said in an episode of “Break Point.” “It’s hard to be happy in tennis because everyone loses but one person every week.” That’s a tough audit from a player who has won far more than his nearly 2,000 colleagues on tour.
Executive Produced by Paul Martin and Oscar-winning filmmaker James Gay-Reese, Breakpoint is aimed at tennis fans who have had trouble watching flashy, well-produced, and easily accessible sports documentaries. appeared this year as a gift for come with Today, tennis finds itself in the twilight light of an era where at least five different players — the Williams sisters, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — certainly deserve their own miniseries. . However, the sport has taken on event television status, as seen in Amazon’s all-access program All or Nothing, which follows different professional sports teams each season, and Michael Jordan’s Netflix documentary series The Last Dance. It was never established. The Chicago Bulls have a gorgeous line-up of buzzwords like Nas, Isiah Thomas, and “ex-Chicago resident” Barack Obama. Perhaps this is because while the genre’s narrative tropes tend toward victory and Gatorade showers, the procedural and psychological realities of professional tennis lie elsewhere. His ten episodes of “Breakpoint” unromantically portray tennis. This is a rare sports document where loss is the main subject.
In Andre Agassi’s hauntingly candid memoir, Open, he describes the tennis calendar in delicate poetry: “On the other side of the world, the year begins with the Australian Open, and then it’s just the sun. The state of chasing “is detailed. This itinerary will more or less determine the structure of the ‘breakpoints’, starting with the first Grand Slam of the year and ending with the year-end championships in November. At each tournament, high-profile players perform impressively, often thwarted by the sport’s die-hard celebrities, and more often than not through a fit of nerves or exhaustion. They find comfort as much as possible, juggling his soccer balls or lying down listening to his self-made R.&B. Tracked in hotel room. But after shedding many tears, they redouble their determination to work harder, get smarter, and get hungrier. “You have to be calm to build a champion’s mindset,” says Greek player Stefanos Tsitsipas.
