Issue 01: What You Do Next

Monday Advantage is for people who don't leave tennis at the court. You might play. You might be raising a player. You might follow the tour closely enough that you're still thinking about Sunday's final on Tuesday. Very often, you're more than one of those things. What connects us is that we're curious about the game beyond the score.

Every Monday, I'll bring you three small things: one thought on what tennis teaches us, one idea worth borrowing, and one thing from the tennis world that caught my attention.

I'm Simona. I started Girls Play Tennis. I'm a player who came to tennis in adulthood, a tennis parent, and someone who spends an unreasonable amount of time thinking about what this game teaches us when I'm not actually playing it. That's where Monday Advantage came from.

The name means exactly what it means on a scoreboard: an advantage is useful, but temporary. What matters is what you do with the next point.

What Tennis Teaches Us

I got back on court after a few weeks of summer travel and within about ten minutes I was fairly convinced I was dying.

Not out of shape. I work out. I move all the time, on purpose. But tennis turns out to have its own specific fitness, and there's no substitute for it.

It took me a few sessions to stop being annoyed about that and start treating it as the actual work.

Not a lapse to apologize for — just the bill that comes due after being away, paid the same way it's always paid: by showing up again, not by feeling bad about the gap.

Consistency doesn't need to be missed loudly. It just quietly picks back up the moment you do.

An Idea Worth Borrowing

There's a piece of Stoic philosophy Ryan Holiday keeps returning to in his own writing, borrowed from Epictetus: the distinction between what's actually yours to control and the things that are “not up to us.”

We don't control many of the things we pursue in life. Consistency — whether we show up today and do the actual work in front of us — is one of the things we can control.

What Caught My Eye

For the first time since 1975, all four top seeds in the US Open women's draw reached the semifinals — Sabalenka, Rybakina, Pegula, Gauff.

I don't think it was a coincidence that all four also arrived in New York with a shot at the No. 1 ranking. A season of consistency had put them in contention. What happened from there wasn't entirely up to any one of them: Sabalenka, Pegula and Gauff needed the title; Rybakina could secure No. 1 by reaching the semifinals.

But each of them could control her own side of the equation. And all four did, match after match, until there was no one else left.

For Rybakina, reaching the semifinals secured No. 1. Winning the US Open was still a separate job, on a separate day. She still had to beat Sabalenka.

She did.

See you next Monday.
— Simona