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

And in other transmissions, I did hear your voice pretty much throughout when I was reading it. So you certainly succeeded in that category. I've got a couple of sort of generic questions about the book, actually. One is sort of the title, actually. You know, I think a lot of authors tend to come to that part of it at the end. One or two maybe don't, but you certainly have a good idea of the structure and where you want to head.

head the one the one other aspect of sort of part b of this question as well is did you ever toy with the coolest sport for example rather than the coolest game i didn't i didn't toy with the cruelest sport um it was interesting did you just go with natural did you think this works perfectly because of x y and z

So I think you lay out the case very well, both in the last half an hour as we've been speaking, but also throughout the book, as to it being the coolest game. From your book, I'm also deriving and coming up with ideas, some of which I already have before.

some of which are either augmented perhaps as I read your book, but also some may be just sparked by it as to why it is the coolest game. I'm gonna throw some of these at you, and I want you to sort of bear in mind two things as I throw these thoughts at you. So this is answering the question is why is it? Because I think it is pretty much the coolest game. I think it pretty much is the coolest sport for all the reasons we've already highlighted. But I was also curious as to why, and I want you to try and think if you've changed your mind

Or even maybe just begun to answer that question yourself as you wrote the book. But I'm just going to throw a few ideas at you. So I wrote this down today as I was thinking about this question. Why do you think they are so tortured? Could it be some of the incredibly spoiled backgrounds? Could it be the nature of the sport? Could it be the selfish desire of the parents, perhaps brought on by a sense of entitlement for the aforementioned parents?

Or is it the individual pursuit, the grueling calendar, the traveling, the grueling nature on the bodies? Also, all of this being played out in the public eye that, you know, you've got changes of ends when you're sitting down. We saw it yesterday with Jack Draper in tears because of that.

physical turmoil that he's going through at the moment. You know, you've got them sitting down on these chairs just staring into the heat whilst some crazy tune is being played out, you know, on the court at the same time. These are all unique aspects whilst having millions staring at you, either through their TV sets or, of course, a few thousand in the crowd. Also, the final thing as well is having this weapon in your hand.

your strongest hand to the one that you're most likely to throw a punch with or point a gun with or do anything of any sort of physical nature. It is like a loaded gun during Russian roulette. And yet in the most immense moment of frustration, you're actually wishing for the bullet to be your end game and maybe contribute to the torture that you're going through. I mean, I guess my short answer would be yes. It's all of it's all of those things.

Former pro Connor Nyland touches on this in the racket. I don't know if you're familiar with his book about the travails of playing tennis lower down the echelons of the world rankers. I think he reached 127 in the world. But what he touched upon is around this time in the early teenage years and maybe a little bit younger as well, 11, 12. He had friends in other sports, take rugby or soccer or whatever.

And he really envied their childhood because they could in these team sports where you would play for, say, one and a half hours a week and you'd have the camaraderie as well with your teammates and your buddies. And you didn't have to sacrifice parties because that was all part of it. You know, when you were 14, 15, 16 and even 17, you know, and you're you're starting to drink and stuff and you know the impact it has on your sporting career. But you also know you're not playing a game for three or four days and you can

You're also only traveling much shorter distances, you know, certainly not crossing an ocean or even a continent. And yet you so you go to these parties. And yet as a teenager who's playing tennis or even as I say, someone who's 11 or 12, you can't necessarily go to these parties and be a child. Yeah, I mean, look, let's make no mistake about it. Plenty of teenage players.

There's a couple of players I'd like to touch on that you go into great detail on in your book, and there's many, but there's a couple that I think we have time for. One is Madison Keyes. We already touched on her briefly already. I find her tennis story and the way it's sort of...

you know she's still playing and i'm sure she still desires many more grand slams but if she doesn't achieve any more she sort of reached that eventual peak she took a very scenic route to winning that australian open in 2025 if we think back to her first uh grand slam final almost a year before sorry 10 years before a decade before almost and i also thought of a time when i actually spoke to her in a press conference

And I don't think she liked the question very much. I know she didn't because somebody told me that she wasn't particularly amused by the nature of my question. And it was in the summer of 2024. So six months before she eventually won that Australian Open. And by this day, she was starting to sort of build up a resume of near misses.

possibly none more so than in the US Open semifinal of 2023, when I think she bageled Savalenko and they were nip and tuck in the second set. And she had chances to get it done in straights and eventually lost that semifinal. And it felt like there was a... And I asked her...

I don't think it was too clumsily put. I hope it wasn't. I haven't seen the question for a while, but I basically just said, like, you know, how quickly can you put these two aside? A bit like some of the things we were just saying is, you know, how quickly can you get over losing that big point? I heard Rafa and Tony talk about this a lot, Nadal, about how you've just got to move on from that mistake and that devastating loss because there's another big tournament just around the corner.

And I was trying to ask it from a fan's perspective, like, you know, how quickly can you get over these these devastating blows in your tennis career? And she said, well, I'm thinking you can tell from the nature of her response. But I also got told separately that she wasn't. But she said, well, I'm thinking about them now. Anyway, that was basically her response.

The Grand Slam goal to win one maybe one day, is that something that you think about? Do you think about some of the near misses? Can you move on from losses such as the one you had against Savalenka last year? Are they easy to move on from or are you still thinking about them? Well, I'm thinking about them now. Yeah, I think about them. They probably keep you up more than they do me. Okay, cool. Thank you.

yeah and then of course six months later and i was thinking about that moment with her during your part of the book on on madison keys because you also mentioned how um you know maybe coming to the conclusion that it's okay if you lose it's okay we'll be you know having coffee uh her and her partner will be having coffee again in california if they lose but obviously don't doesn't mean you can't leave everything on the court i'd like you just to talk a little bit about that yeah she i mean madison

But I think that's one thing that really helps Coco Gauff, that she really feels like she's playing for other people. She's not just playing for herself. Matt, you talk about that. Actually, having a purpose is something I know. So Alex Ferguson has spoken about the legendary soccer coach of Manchester United for more than 25 years. Having a purpose, having a reason. There's a reason why some of these countries, when they gather together, and I'm thinking about Serbia, among others, Croatia as well, when they get together in

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