A New G'day, From Melbourne

On the ground for Bounces' first major trip: the 2025 Australian Open.

Walking into the Australian Open indeed hits different this time. (Photo by Ben Rothenberg)

MELBOURNE, Australia—I really didn’t think I’d be here.

In some ways, Melbourne in January is an obvious locale for me. This is my twelfth time here to cover the Australian Open in the last fourteen years; since first coming here as a 24-year-old freelancer in 2012 I’ve only missed it twice: once during the hard-quarantine year of 2021, and again when I was holed up at home for nearly all of 2023 writing a book.

There have been many major changes across those years, for myself personally and professionally, and for the whole media ecosystem in tennis and beyond. The Australian Open media workrooms have been relocated for a third time on the grounds, and this time the rooms are noticeably shrunken; it shouldn’t have been a surprise after how many empty desks there were here last year, but it was still jarring to see in such stark visual terms how much less physical space the international tennis media now takes up after years of attrition.

I was ready and resigned to becoming part of that attrition for most of last year. But after being encouraged by various readers, listeners, followers, and supporters to stick at it, I started Bounces at Substack, and found a renewed passion for covering the world of tennis that I hadn’t expected I could rekindle.

I started Bounces in early October during what’s usually the deadest part of the tennis calendar, a launching time no one would ever recommend for a new tennis publication. But nonetheless I felt like I found my footing in the fall, and enjoyed starting to build an audience and community here. And this sport, certainly, is never boring: even when the sport was supposed to be quiet, a second top player tested positive for a banned substance, and the sport’s landscape continued becoming more surreal and suspect.

I’m proud of the work I did here at Bounces in those first three months. But as much as I feel like I’ve built myself a strong foundation of tennis knowledge and contacts from my years traveling the tour that allows me to keep a bearing on the sport from anywhere, I don’t just want to be popping off from a distance. I built my career in tennis as an on-the-ground reporter for years. I know that being up-close to the sport gave me the ability to describe its textures in a way I never could have without feeling it for myself, and I wanted to renew and maintain that quality in my work so I don’t lose touch.

So I decided to take the plunge for this nascent, newborn venture. I’m back on the road with the tennis tours for the longest trip of them all: Melbourne.

It was a risk, to be sure, booking this long and expensive trip to Australia, which requires the most expensive flights and weeks of lodgings. But staying home during the first major tennis tournament of Bounces existence would have felt like phoning it in or giving up. Coming here, and reinvesting some of the money I’ve gotten from early subscribers, is the best way I could think of to committing to making Bounces the best it can possibly be.

I don’t know exactly what Bounces will look as it shifts into Grand Slam Mode for the first time, but I’m excited to see what I can do with the place. More of the world will be tuned into tennis than it ever has been before during Bounces’ existence, and I want to give them—and those of you have who have already found me here—something here they won’t get anywhere else.

I also want to thank the Tennis Australia media operations folks for credentialing me under Bounces, an outlet so new that it didn’t even exist during the previous Grand Slam tournament back in September. I really appreciate the trust in me that’s been built up over the years that made them ready to give Bounces a key to this space.

I also truly appreciate those of you whose paid subscriptions created the funds that made this trip possible, and I’m really hopeful that more readers can subscribe so this trip can prove to have been a worthwhile investment. Of the thousands of subscribers I’ve accrued here so far, only about 8% percent of Bounces subscribers are subscribing at a paid level.

That’s not a big number, but it’s been massive, and I’m constantly grateful for each new subscriber who trickles in. Even though I almost always mute notifications on any network I join, I’ve kept the new subscriber notifications turned on here at Substack—the vibration when a new subscription chimes in my inbox is a seriously meaningful endorphin rush, and a heartening validation of the work I’ve been doing here.

If more of you can subscribe—or if you’ve already subscribed, perhaps recommend subscribing to others—we can make it so this first Bounces trip to a major isn’t the last.

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Though I’ve been finishing up several other pieces that you’ll see in coming days, I wanted to check in from Melbourne with this note first.

The timing feels right to outline the stakes: today is the first day of Australian Open qualifying, one of the starkest days on the tennis calendar. Hundreds of players ranked outside the Top 100, underdogs who don’t quite feel like they’ve made it, have flown long distances to this far lower right corner of the world map that Melbourne occupies, propelled by the most powerful jetfuel of all: hope.

But hope that was built up like muscles in the offseason can atrophy extremely quickly on this day. Once matches start, half of these hopefuls will lose in the very first round of qualifying, sent home after falling at the first hurdle. They’ll trudge back onto another long flight, this time going back home or toward wherever the next tournament might be, spirits sagging below cruising altitude with less of that hope to lift their wings. Only 1 in 8 players in qualifying will make it out of qualifying and into the main draw, where they might finally feel like they’ve made it.

I like to hope that my odds of success are better than that here. From qualifying, into the main draw, and all the way through the finals, I’m going to scrap hard over these weeks I’m down here to get as many “wins” for you folks as I can. I don’t know if I will be able to bring home anything equivalent to a trophy, but I hope I can get some good Bounces for you—pun intended—and keep myself out here a little longer.

G’day and thanks!

Ben