Serena Returns; 2026 French Open Ends
6/10/202657 min
Ben and Tumaini are no longer together in Paris, but catch up on the finish in France as well as the event that had Tumaini rushing back to London: Serena Williams' return to professional tennis.
We start with Serena's comeback with Tumaini's perspective from on the ground at Queen's Club: how did she look after four years away? What's it like being back in her orbit? Where does she go from here?
We then look back at the French Open, starting with the women where Mirra Andreeva consolidated years of teen phenom hype and Maja Chwalinska was one of the most shocking Slam finalists ever.
We also discuss the discussion around the men's champion, Alexander Zverev, about whom TV broadcasters badly failed their audiences.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBen Rothenberg· Host0:00
Miss Ostapenko has no challenges remaining Welcome to No Challenges Remaining. I'm Ben Rothenberg of Bounce, joined by Tumani Carayol of The Guardian, who is of course NCR Spain and Sub-Saharan Africa correspondent. Tumani, we've been together. We were living together for weeks, and now we're not, uh, together. I'm still in France. You are back in London, and we're actually gonna start back in London 'cause you... This... You get no breaks. I mean, you, your, your schedule is as [laughs] I think you put on Instagram today, it's like peak Dominic Thiem, the way you're every damn week on the tour. Um- Yeah ... Dominic Thiem, who, who was seen on television recently during the French Open. Um, you were there at Queen's Club. Let's just start with this. We'll get to the French Open finals. This will be our French Open wrap show as well, but I wanna talk about the most recent event, the freshest event, which happened a few hours ago, which is Serena Williams making her comeback to professional tennis, playing doubles with Victoria Mboko and winning 7-6, 6-2 over the team of doubles specialists Nicole Melichar Martinez and Erin Routliffe. Uh, Serena and Vickie went up 4-1 in the first set, then got dragged back, and they went to a tie break, but they won. And, uh, I think Serena's performance was mixed, but definitely not bad, and I mean, definitely better th- for example, than when she played her first match after having her first baby, which was a Fed Cup match. I don't know if you remember this, a Fed Cup doubles match she played with Venus, um, I think in Asheville, North Carolina, I wanna