Southpaw Goes to the Movies: Netflix's "Break Point"
The new Netflix series provides a raw — if imperfect — window into the real source of tennis's appeal.
Dear readers,
Like many Brooklyn dudes who spent too much time in front of the TV during the early days of the COVID pandemic, we fell head-over-heels for Netflix docu-series Drive to Survive, which provides a truly fascinating and unexpectedly intimate glimpse into the world of Formula 1 racing. So you can imagine our glee when we found out that the production team behind Drive to Survive was training its cameras on a new subject: tennis.
As long-time readers may know, Calder has lately been hitting the courts around the city, making him Southpaw’s resident (and default) tennis correspondent. So for this week’s newsletter, Calder binged the new series — which dropped its first tranche of five episodes this past Friday, just in time for the start of this year’s Australian Open — and wrote up a little review for your enjoyment.
His rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ / 5
Happy reading,
Calder & Ian
After opening with a few inquisitive shots of tennis courts, Netflix’s new tennis docu-series Break Point begins with the camera trained on a silhouette that will be familiar to tennis fans around the world. The wispy hair, the muscular left arm, the stoic stride: it is, without question, late-stage Rafael Nadal.
The eagle-eyed viewer would be forgiven, in that moment, for letting out a small sigh of frustration. Nadal is an interesting enough character in his own right — certainly moreso than his longtime rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. But those three men have so thoroughly dominated men’s tennis for the last decade and a half that plenty of fans are understandably ready for something new.
This appetite for a fresh set of faces has been long in the making. Last year, when Djokovic was turned away from the Australian Open due to his unvaccinated status, we wrote: “The Australian Open might lose some ratings without Novak, but the financial hit wouldn’t be so hard if the people running the sport were willing to engage more directly with tennis’ real cultural cache rather than with the achievements of its top stars.”
Could Break Point finally be the show to tap into that cultural cache?
Fortunately for the viewers of Break Point, Nadal remains little more than a shadow that looms over the competition at last year’s Australian Open, where the show begins. Instead, the first few episodes introduce viewers to tennis’s new generation of talent: the Australian hot-head Nick Kyrgios, his doubles partner and fellow Aussie Thanasi Kokkinakis, Italian Matteo Berrettini, and women’s singles player (and Berrettini’s then-girlfriend) Ajla Tomljanovic. We also meet Kyrgios’ girlfriend, his manager, his mom, Berrettini’s mom, and charming grandparents. Later on, the spotlight falls on Californian Taylor Fritz as he navigates his hometown tournament at Indian Wells, and in a standout episode, the camera tracks Spaniard Paula Badosa and Tunisian Ons Jabeur in Madrid as they discuss mental health in the sport and the financial pressures that weigh on up-and-coming players. Finally, we are introduced to Casper Ruud and Felix Auger-Aliassime as they navigate the French Open.
The producers know what they’re doing. The production team behind Break Point is the same team that produced Netflix’s unexpected hit Drive to Survive, which took viewers behind the scenes of Formula 1 racing and transformed the sport into a niche sensation in the United States. In Break Point, the production team borrows some of the narrative tricks that made Drive to Survive such a gripping watch, like leaning into rivalries between players (and coaches) and overlaying juicy bits of broadcast commentary over live match footage.
At points, this approach can have a somewhat distorting effect on the story of the tennis itself. Hardcore tennis fans might complain, for example, that the show failed to show just how well Kyrgios faired at last year’s Australian Open against his second-round opponent Daniil Medvedev, the eventual tournament runner-up. Others might quibble with the fact that Netflix spent essentially no time on the marathon Australian Open men’s singles final between Medvedev and Nadal, which went to five sets and was arguably the best match of the 2022 season.
And yet I — one of the sickos who woke up in the middle of the night to watch that match live — have no such quibbles. Break Point focuses on individual characters and makes them seem more like people and less like distant statues. For a sport that has for so long been hamstrung by staid tradition, it’s a welcome and dynamic injection of capital-F Fun into the tennis discourse. In a best-case scenario, the show will do for professional tennis what Drive to Survive has done for Foruma 1. At the very least, it will get more people to play tennis (though hopefully not in Brooklyn, where it’s already hard enough to get a court).
Still, the docu-series is not without its faults. The show’s most ambitious political swing — and also its most troubling — takes place in the first episode, which follows Nick Kyrgios through his aforementioned loss to Medvedev and then his triumph in doubles in Australia.
In that episode, Kyrgios is open with the cameras about his struggles with mental health and the emotional demands of being tennis’s up-and-coming “box office” name. After he beat Nadal at Wimbledon in 2014 at the age of 19, Kyrgios tells the camera, “everything changed.” And viewers can see that change happening in real time, with the help of some nifty archival footage. Practically overnight, Kyrgios goes from a relative nobody to a tennis celebrity, with cameras crowding around him as he waits to pick up his luggage at the baggage claim after the tournament. But away from the public eye, Kyrgios admits, he was drinking every night, even before big matches. His manager says that he was constantly following Kyrgios’ location on his phone and would have to track him down — and dry him out — before matches.
As a result, Kyrgios decided to pump the breaks on his professional tennis career. In the long run, this has worked out well for him. Today, Kyrgios takes longer breaks from the sport than many of his rivals, but in 2022, he had the most successful and complete season of his career, including a trip to the Wimbledon final. Though his on-court antics continue, he seems to have gotten himself under enough control to perform well.
But what Break Point viewers are seeing is a snapshot in time, a moment when there was a real question of whether Kyrgios would keep playing tennis at all after the 2022 Australian Open. It’s genuinely touching. But there’s also a downside to this pull-back-the-curtain approach. This elision allows Netflix to paint Kyrgios as a troubled athlete affected by his rising fame, rather than merely as a juvenile and entitled asshole, as some of his detractors have claimed. You can decide for yourself which is more accurate, but neither one captures the whole story. The whole story, for instance, would include the fact that Kyrgios faced an assault charge from a former girlfriend stemming from an incident in January of 2021. In October of last year, his team attempted to have the charge dismissed on mental health grounds; the case was adjourned and is expected to begin again next month.
Netflix hasn’t released the full season of Break Point yet, so we don’t know for sure if they’ll deal with the incident or not. But this is one of the problems with the sort of personality-heavy, narrative-driven documentary filmmaking that Break Point represents: No one is promising the full picture. If Netflix leaves out the abuse allegation entirely, it will feel like a real slap in the face to its viewers, who deserve to have all the facts — and not just the most palatable ones — laid out for them.
Still, I’d argue that the show is largely effective at cutting through the pomp and circumstance that too often hides tennis’s real appeal. We learn more about Kyrgios’ struggle with mental health. We see him as someone who tries — and often fails — to live up to his promises to clean up his act and become a mature adult on and off the court. It is an edited and incomplete portrait of one of tennis’s most controversial players, but it’s still more real and raw than anything coming out of a press conference.
We’ll be waiting to see if and how they deal with the Kyrgios assault allegations in Part 2, but for now, we’re happy to give it the Southpaw stamp of approval.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
. . . UFC’s bumbling handling of its latest domestic abuse scandal? “Dana White Says His Punishment For Hitting His Wife Is Being Dana White,” by Patrick Redford for Defector (January 12, 2023).
. . . the NFL’s (curiously stubborn!) diversity problem? “The NFL is down to two Black coaches. Will anything change this offseason?” by Dave Sheinin in The Washington Post (January 11, 2023).
. . . the trials and travails of a Ukrainian tennis star? “War and Motherhood Sidelined Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina. She’s Ready to Return,” by Christopher Clary in The New York Times (January 12, 2023).