No Challenges Remaining

Episode 4 was struck down by the crippling stomach virus that is spreading around the Coachella Valley, so Ben and Courtney, who are both in Indian Wells for the BNP Paribas Open, reconvened to discuss what’s happened so far and what we look forward to during the business end of the tournament. We talk about Mardy Fish and Petra Kvitova’s early dismissals, the beautiful grounds at Indian Wells, and we hop on the Mona Barthel bandwagon. Tune in for our predictions just so you can hear Courtney say Ana Ivanovic had no shot against Caroline Wozniacki. When asked for a comment, Courtney said “Oops.”

On this week’s episode, Ben and Courtney recap last week’s play in Dubai, Rotterdam, San Jose, and the NCAA Indoor Team Championships in Charlottesville. We also talk about Victoria Azarenka’s winning streak, contracting a tough case of Milos Fever, the two sides of Roddick’s coin, and Rodney Dangerfield, er….we mean Caroline Wozniacki’s response to Martina Navratilova’s comments. Finally, Courtney interviewed Sam Stosur and she lives to tell the tale. Links mentioned on this week’s episode:

• WTA Punchbags (Tennis Forum)
• Open Rookie Has Queens Roots (NY Times)
• Courtney interviews Sam Stosur (SI.com)
• Caroline Wozniacki responds to Navratilova’s comments (SI.com)
• Hardcourts by John Feinstein (Amazon.com)
• AUDIO: Jon Wertheim talks to former NFL coach Brian Billick about tennis. (SI.com)

Introducing the debut episode of No Challenges Remaining, a podcast designed with nothing in mind other than to talk about tennis. In the first episode, Ben Rothenberg and Courtney Nguyen talk about the Americans’ beatdown of Switzerland in Davis Cup, Great Britain winning all four Slams in the span of two weeks (at least we assume that’s what happened based on the media coverage), Caroline Wozniacki’s development (or not), Carla Suarez Navarro and Ivan Dodig (trust us, there’s context), and we rant about Twitter for no good reason.