I’m delighted to introduce the first-ever Making A Racket podcast. I set it up in collaboration with my good friend Steven Baker with the intention of starting more conversations about women’s sport.

This opening episode does exactly that, as we spend most of the time talking about what happened in the Women’s Singles event at the 2020 US Open. So you can enjoy plenty of discussion about the champion Naomi Osaka, as well as other players who played a huge role in the tournament such as Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka.

We also discuss motherhood, which became one of the biggest talking points of the event when Tsvetana Pironkova reached the quarter-final at her first tournament since she had a baby, and how the event was run behind closed doors and what effect that had on it.

While we mostly talk about women’s tennis, we could not ignore some of the interesting things that happened in the Men’s Singles. So we reviewed Dominic Thiem’s maiden Grand Slam win and amused ourselves by debating Novak Djokovic’s already-infamous disqualification.

Finally, if you like a good tangent, we drifted into a discussion about the Olympics for about 14 minutes. This takes place between 17:28 and 31:27, so you can skip it if you want.

I hope you enjoy listening to our first Making A Racket podcast. We would love to know what you think about it, so please feel free to comment below or email your feedback to me at awolsj@gmail.com.