The era of Roger and Rafa and Serena and Andy may be drifting towards its to inevitable end (not Novak – he’ll go on forever), but the question of exactly which elite tennis players will fill their non-marking shoes is yet to be settled. Will it be the lithe Canadian sapling, Félix Auger-Aliassime, currently number seven in the men’s rankings? The likeable Tunisian Ons Jabeur, currently the women’s number two? Or how about handsome Californian Taylor Fritz, who’s popped straight out of an episode of Euphoria and into the men’s rankings’ ninth spot?
This is the gamble Netflix is taking with its new 10-part documentary series, Break Point, which looks to do for tennis what Formula 1: Drive to Survive did for motor racing: ie. make people who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the sport do just that (it comes, in fact, from the same production company, Box to Box Films). To achieve that you need access, you need fresh characters, you need juicy storylines and every so often you need a win. All of which the first five episodes of Break Point, released today, have, albeit in modest amounts. But does that mean you should write it off? Like betting against Nadal when he’s two sets down, you’d be rash to do so.
The first episode follows Australian live-wire Nick Kyrgios, who, both viewers and the programme-makers might have imagined, would give guaranteed “good copy”. We watch him prep for the 2022 Australian Open, the first of the tennis season’s four grand slam tournaments (as explained by fake-commentary narration, the phoniness of which can be grating), and wonder whether his big serve will get the better of his opponents, or his big mouth will get the better of him. We meet his manager and best friend, Daniel “Horse” Horsfall, and his then-new girlfriend and self-confessed tennis ignoramus Costeen Hatzi, to whom, when off court, he seems surgically attached. And we get to see how he fared in the men’s singles tournament, which tennis fans will likely already know, and also in the doubles, which even if they did know at the time, they’d have likely forgotten by now.
As putting Kyrgios up first clearly betrays, the programme-makers know the episodes have to be about more than the usual sports narrative arc of plucky-player-tries-hard-and-ultimately-triumphs. Because when you’re making an observational documentary series, who’s to say who’s going to win? As it turns out, the Kyrgios episode is not especially revealing, in large part because there isn’t a lot he doesn’t reveal himself during regular tennis coverage, in outbursts at umpires and punchy post-match press conferences. But it is in the subsequent episodes, with less media-catnippy players, that things start to get more subtly interesting.
How, for example, do Italy’s Matteo Berrettini and Australia’s Ajla Tomljanović manage to maintain a romantic relationship in the face of differing tournament schedules and levels of success? (Spoiler alert, as of recent reports: they don’t.) How does Spain’s Paula Badosa manage her recurring depression in a game that can – as confirmed by talking heads such as Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova – take such an extreme mental toll? How does Jabeur, the pioneering Arab and African player, feel about the career-compromising prospect of having a baby one day (a question put to her, conveniently for the film-makers, by her husband and fitness coach, Karim Kamoun)?
It's all quite nuanced, subtle stuff, and though there are cute moments – the absolute carnage of Berrettini and Tomljanovic’s hotel room; the mystifying wisdom that Toni Nadal, uncle of Rafa, imparts to Auger-Aliassime (“Winning will come if you strike the ball well”) – there is no high drama or stand-out character quite yet. In fact, it’s telling that the most electrifying moment in the whole series, which happens in episode five, comes from Rafa himself, to whom the show did not have access. In a wordless scene, we see him limbering up in the corridor next to another of Break Point’s amiable subjects, Norway’s big hope, Casper Ruud, whom he is about to play in the final of the French Open. As Nadal executes an intimidating, manspreading warm-up routine that is Partridgean in its vigour, Ruud’s discomfort – he seems to want to melt into the wall – is almost unbearable to watch.
All of which is to say that – and again, for anyone who keeps half an eye on the sport, no huge surprises here – this isn’t a show about sporting glory. At least not yet. In fact, there are only a couple of times that any of the players the show is following actually wins (and you can assume they had to back more than one horse: “Are they recording you or me?” Paula Badosa asks Greece’s Maria Sakkari, subject of episode three, during a pre-match warm-up). But when, at the end of episode five, the teaser appears for the next five episodes, which will include Wimbledon and the US Open and be released in June, you can’t help wondering (if you don’t already know) how the kids will get on. After all, you may remember a passing mention in the first episode of series one of Formula 1: Drive to Survive – series five of which is due in March – of an “exciting, emerging” new Belgian-Dutch driver called Max Verstappen. Trust the process.
'Break Point' is available on Netflix now
Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
