Jacopo Lo Monaco calls up on Vanni Gibertini who is on site at the All England Club to analyze together the single's draws for the 2018 Championships. Regardless of her ranking, Serena Williams is the star of the women's competition (04:10). All the other players (14:41) will keep a look on how she is doing.The men's draw (30:57) lives, once again, on the duopoly Federer-Nadal, with everyone struggling to see who could rain on their parade (now that Centre Court has a roof!)

Double Break

Double Break (episode 15) - Wimbledon draws preview

After an unfortunate mishap during the post-Roland Garros podcast, the most dynamic duo in tennis (Jacopo Lo Monaco and Vanni Gibertini) return to reflect on the grass season so far. Roger Federer came up short in Halle (02:50) against a surprisingly solid Borna Coric (06:14), while at the Queen's club in London (14:23) Novak Djokovic missed a match-point in his first final in a long time to lose to Marin Cilic (20:22), who confirms his role as one of the favourites for the Championships. Kyrgios (22:44) had a good run to the semifinal and picked up a €15,000 euro fine for unsportsmanlike conduct, just to live his role to the fullest.In the WTA Tour (29:45) Petra Kvitova won her 5th title for 2018 in Birmingham and goes into Wimbledon as the de-facto favourite. Serena (33:46) should not be seeded, and probably will not be (unlike what may be happening at the US Open), although the bookmakers have her as the n.1 favourite.The men's seeds for the Championships are out (38:16): Cilic is a winner, jumping from 5 to 3, Raonic and Kyrgios are bumped to one of the Top 16 spots and Halle champion Coric gets the n.17 seed.

Double Break (episode 14): Road to Wimbledon - whose grass is greener?

Jacopo Lo Monaco and Vanni Gibertini return to analyze the singles draws for the second Slam of the year. They pick their favourite first round matches (04:40) and then they go through each draw, men (21:09) and women (41:48), pointing out the possible match-ups they would like to see and whose chances they fancy to get to the business end of the tournament.

Double Break (episode 13): Roland Garros - Draws analysis

Jacopo Lo Monaco and Vanni Gibertini are back after a short break to talk about the Mutua Madrid Open and what indications it gave us going heading towards the French Open.Nadal lost. And that is big news (01:45). But the big favourite for Rome and Paris is still the Spaniard from Manacor. Nadal has never really felt comfortable in Madrid (03:52), it is by far his least successful clay court event. Thiem and Zverev (05:59) look the most credible opponents to Nadal on his way to an 11th title at Roland Garros. But are they really?Other players, some of which did well in Madrid, could be a factor in Paris: Shapovalov (10:32), Anderson (13:10), Edmund (14:20) and Djokovic(16:20).Petra Kvitova has won Madrid (21:16) for the third time and has already racked up four titles this season – is Paris the next one? Kiki Bertens (23:00), Karolina Pliskova (24:05) and Simona Halep (25:20) all played solidly in Madrid and have to be considered among the favourites for the French Open. Sharapova (26:33) could be a dark horse, Serena Williams (34:30) a big question mark.ThefFinal topic is the possible effects on tennis of the US Supreme Court decision to allow individual state do regulate sports betting (37:06). US pro leagues are quite keen to get a share of the pie: can tennis do the same?

Double Break (episode 12): Waiting for Paris

This week Vanni Gibertini and Jacopo Lo Monaco try to understand if there is anyone who can beat Nadal on clay after his 11th title in Montecarlo (02:11). Novak Djokovic showed some signs of improvement in the Principality (11:45), although he has already lost in Barcelona and he doesn’t seem to be doing much better than when he came back in Australia. Another player whose shares are on the up is Grigor Dimitrov (18:28), who won a couple of tough matches in Montecarlo and won a good first round in Barcelona.Last week it was Fed Cup week (20:25) with two semifinals in Europe and eight playoff matches to define the 16 teams for World Group I and World Group II in 2019. The final is going to be Czech Republic vs USA, in the Czech Republic, most likely in Prague.In the playoff ties (23:40) Italy was defeated for the second time in two weeks in Genoa: 0-4 to Belgium and no promotion to Word Group I. Vanni was in Montreal for the dramatic Canada-Ukraine playoff (26:00) where the locals had to power through three injuries of their players to remain in World Group II.In London the Independent Review Panel for the Integrity of the game released an Interim Report with the work carried out so far and some recommendations to fight match fixing in tennis (34:00). The main focus is on the lower level of ITF tournaments ($25k and below) where the vast majority of match fixing seems to be happening and the players in those tournaments should not be considered “professionals”. It is recommended that the ITF rescind its contract with Sportsradar for selling live scoring to betting companies for those tournaments, and ATP, WTA and Grand Slams tournaments should compensate the ITF for the financial loss.

Double Break (episode 11): Is it "rien ne va plus" for the ITFs?

The tennis podcast by Jacopo Lo Monaco and Vanni Gibertini, the duo that hopefully gives you a double-break advantage in understanding the game from the inside.

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Double Break

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