“By the way,” Tomljanovic says at one point, “do we have a room?” Shortly after his daughter sealed her spot in the final eight of the world’s pre-eminent tennis tournament, Ratko was seen on booking.com, extending their stay in London.
This is not the stuff of your typical sports documentary, but it is the life of a professional tennis player.
“Break Point,” executive-produced by Paul Martin and the Oscar-winning filmmaker James Gay-Rees, arrived this year as a gift to tennis fans, for whom splashy, well-produced and readily accessible documentaries about the sport have been hard to come by.
Perhaps this is because the narrative tropes of the genre tend toward triumphs and Gatorade showers, while the procedural and psychological realities of professional tennis lie elsewhere.
The 10 episodes of “Break Point” render tennis unromantically: This is the rare sports doc whose primary subject is loss.
Persons:
Ajla, Ratko, Chris Evert, ” Tomljanovic, Taylor Fritz, Paul Martin, Oscar, James Gay, Rees, splashy, Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic —, Michael Jordan’s, Nas, Isiah Thomas, “, ” Barack Obama, Andre Agassi’s, ”, Stefanos Tsitsipas
Organizations:
Netflix, Tennis, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, Gatorade
Locations:
London, Chicago