John Silk

speaker

11,571 appearances 32 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 12 Aug

John Silk’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 32 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 14.

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Talking Tennis · Interview with Matthew Futterman: Author of "The Cruelest Game" · 12 Aug 2026 podcast

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, whatever time it is in the world, wherever you are tuning in from. Matt, you are on the east coast, or eastern side at least, of the U.S., so I know it's just past 11 a.m. where you are, right? Yes, I am full on the east coast. I'm about 200 yards from the Atlantic Ocean. Well, then you are on the east coast. Yeah, I'm about as east coast as you can possibly get right now.

Right. We were just talking before I hit record about obviously you're doing the rounds, you're talking about your book, which is primarily what we're here to discuss. In fact, primarily, I would say almost entirely what we're here to discuss. But we also spoke about, you know, these

uh the promo stuff and you said how you don't always enjoy uh talking about yourself but i guess when you're doing these because i did it myself with my own book five years ago you're sort of talking about your subject matter which has clearly been a passion for you for the last few years right

Some might think, especially if they haven't read your book, but they might just go, well, success, right? I mean, those four players that we just highlighted are the four most successful players in living memory. But you have highlighted two other, three others, possibly in the case of Ash Barty, if you want to throw her in as well. And there are others. But if we just look at Pete Sampras and Bjorn Borg, well, they were very much on route to 15, 20 slams potentially as well, right?

So I didn't know immediately or exactly what the book would be about. I had a feeling from its title, the front page, and maybe the first few pages of the book as well, or the first couple of pages, that it was going to be about this just sport that drives you mad. But what it does do, and you have already touched upon it, it does transmit within a couple of dozen pages or maybe the first couple of chapters,

You already go, oh, this is so there was like a light bulb moment for me, probably about 40, 50 pages in. It's like, yeah, and I've watched tennis for 40 years. I've covered it professionally for the last five. But, you know, it's been there or thereabouts for me for since the mid 80s, since Becker won his first Wimbledon.

And yet, probably until about the 40th or 50th page of your book, I then started to just make a note of all these players. You know, whether it be Bjorn Borg or, to some extent, Pete Sampras, but definitely Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Ash Barty, Igas Fiontek, Bianco Andreescu, Amanda Addison-Mover, if you want to bring it to the current day.

And by the way, the list is almost endless. I mean, we're talking about leaving slams on the table with the exception of those four phenoms that we highlighted before. The other sort of 90% of the others at some point or another were beset with this, Andre Agassi as well, and many others were beset with some kind of real soul searching, stretching,

disgust with the sport disgust with themselves or something like that i mean by the way i've just scratched the surface in in terms of some of these uh the players names i'm sure you can can add to it i mean we're talking about a sizable percentage of the grand slam winners in the open era that have gone through this yeah and so and that was what was really striking to me and it's so institutionalized that's the thing about tennis so much of what is kind of weird about tennis

When you mentioned Steffi Graf, I'm also reminded of someone else from a very similar era in the form of Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, but you could also go through many other tennis players and the relationship with the parents comes to the fore, Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario in particular, and I don't always mean in a positive way.

And this is a funny dynamic that, again, even if it's not exclusive to tennis, tennis is probably the only sport where it's in the foreground and in the highlight. Because there may be issues going on in team sports between players and their parents. We just never know about it because they're in a stadium with 70,000 people and we don't notice if the father or mother is not there or if the father or mother is shouting and so on and so forth.

Of course, in team sports in particular, but a lot of sports in general, you don't quite get the same investment, both in terms of dedication, in terms of time, hours, but also as well in terms of money. I mean, when it comes to a soccer parent, you hand your child over to the club

quite early on, whether the latest in their early teams, but maybe even before that, and then you are just trusting them from that moment onwards, aren't you? Whereas tennis, you know, who knows at what stage it might be when a coach becomes interested in your child, or probably now adult, it could be in their early 20s before, depending on how good they are. But let's just say they're an average player, journeyman or whatever, and they they're scratching around the top 100, they might not get approached by anyone until their early 20s.

It might seem to our audience at times we're going off piste, not for the first time or the last time, but actually, really, all of this is still very relevant to The Cruelest Game and the book itself. But I'm actually going to get into some of the nitty-gritty of it. I heard you say, Matt, on the – I'm going to call you Matt because I also heard you talking about whether you want to be called Matthew or Matt. We've never met before, but nevertheless, I'm feeling at home with you, Matt, if you don't mind, so I'm going to go with that. And I heard you talking to the tennis podcast.

uh about that so um i think you're okay with being called matt right everybody everybody calls me man there you go um so you're getting into the nitty-gritty of it uh you told the tennis podcast that you feel much uh more confident in your abilities as a reporter than as a than as a writer however

There are some gems in here, Matt, that make me chuckle a little bit from time to time. And by the way, sometimes it might be some sort of gallows humor that I'm chuckling at, you know, whether it's the occasional curse word, which I think are aptly used. Or, for example, I mean, there's in the early stages, we've got Coco Goff began to, I am a couple of times I'm paraphrasing, but I'm very close to your wording as well.

Sometimes exactly the same. But anyway, Koko Goff began to fulfill her promise at 19, winning the US Open. That was in 2023. She begins 2024 musing about winning 10 slams. By the end of the summer, she's forgotten how to serve. On the US Open final of 24 between Yannick Sinner and Taylor Fritz, you write something like, Sinner eats him alive. And at 23, Sinner is fast figuring out those aforementioned codes. Alcaraz may be just a little bit better at tennis, though.

If only that was all that mattered, which is great. I don't know if you're giggling a little bit when you're writing this as well. If you're giggling like I am when I'm reading it. I've got two more I want to share with our audience. So, yeah, figuring out a balance between resting and pushing. Careful not to rest too much, though. There's a horde coming for their job if they've gone too long. And those new kids have spent years honing the tools themselves.

not only to catch up, but to step on their faces and not feel the least bit bad about it. That made me chuckle somewhat. And as did this final one I've got. Tsitsipas gushes over Alcaraz. This is, I think, after a practice they had together. And I think Tsitsipas says something along the lines of it made him feel alive again, but he will feel less charitable when Carlos drills him in the quarterfinals. So that's just a few of the gems that I particularly like. And I think you're underselling yourself a bit, Matt, when it comes to the lighting.

I do remember as well when I wrote my book that it was a sports book as well. I was also told by a much more experienced author than myself to try not to go into details of matches and games and so on. So, yeah, and I get that really because, yeah, it just doesn't transmit, I guess, the emotion that you really want to make people feel. And by the way, Matt, you certainly transmit your voice because even though, you know, we've only probably spoken to each other once on the phone, but I've heard your voice obviously in press conferences and

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