The Die Has Been Cast

Last week was one that consisted of travel to New York City to attend the U.S. Open and to see a play written by my daughter that she also acted in and directed. Needless to say, there is a lot to be grateful for to be able to see Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek from a wonderful suite at Arthur Ashe Stadium and then get to see my daughter put her craft to work. I’m a lucky guy.

Given the busy week, this blog will be more pictorial in nature, focusing on our U.S. Open experience. Before doing that, however, I wanted to share this headline from a BBC article written about Novak Djokovic in June.

I’m a big Novak fan as I have come to admire his incredible work ethic, longevity, his focus on continuous improvement, his facility for language, his willingness to innovate and take risks, his philosophical approach to life and tennis, his incredible resilience, and his incomparable success. 

When Heather and I built The TenniSphere we had a bold vision of hosting some of the world’s top players to practice there, and hopefully even stay, prior to the big tournament in Indian Wells. So far we have had Brandon Nakashima and Alex Michelson play at the house which was amazing. I must admit, however, that after I read the interview with Djokovic about his main focus now being wanting to defend his gold medal at the 2028 Summer Olympics my eyes widened quite a bit. And this is because it turns out that those games will be held in the Los Angeles area with the tennis taking place in Carson which is only 33 miles from The TenniSphere. The lightbulb went off and Heather and I started discussing how great it would be for Djokovic and his family to stay at the house and train there during the Olympics.

Now, of course the challenge is getting to Novak and his team. Fortunately the Olympics are still three years away but if we don’t start taking steps to make this happen rather soon, time will slip away from us. The key is to find people who have access to him. The first step is to put the intention out there so people know what we want to accomplish as one never knows who may know someone who knows someone. For example, one person who came to live ball recently is from Montenegro and he said one of his good friends warmed up Novak in that part of the world before he flew to New York to compete in the U.S. Open. Obviously that’s a potential but we shall see if anything materializes from that. 

Heather and I had the great pleasure to be hosted in a suite by J.P. Morgan. The first match involved #2 Iga Swiatek who has been on fire after winning Wimbledon and the Cincinnati Masters. She won the first set easily, surprisingly lost the second one, and pulled out a victory in the third. It was a much more competitive match than everyone was expecting which was great as a spectator.

Iga Swiatek – US Open, August 28, 2025

Here is Iga waiving to the crowd after her victory.

The second and final day session match was #1 seed Jannik Sinner who was playing an opponent, Alexei Popyrin, who has a great serve and beat Djokovic in the 2024 U.S. Open. Sinner being Sinner, however, methodically decimated his opponent by nullifying any strength of his while making relatively few errors, and relentlessly keeping his opponent on defense. Sinner won in three straight sets to advance to the round of 32.

When we went to Indian Wells in March we were also hosted in a suite and Coco Gauff came in to do a meet and greet and to answer some questions. That was an enjoyable experience and not long after that Coco won the French Open so maybe we gave her good luck.

Gary Carmell, Coco Gauff and Heather Carmell at Indian Wells

For Indian Wells we were aware ahead of time that Coco would be coming to the suite. For the U.S. Open, however, we were not expecting any special guests. This turned out not to be the case as we came to learn after arriving the former champion, and now one of tennis’ top commentators, Jim Courier, would be stopping in to talk to us. This was a pleasant surprise for a couple of reasons. The first is because he is so knowledgeable about tennis that I’m sure we would learn something interesting and secondly, perhaps, and just maybe, I might get up the nerve to show him pictures of The TennisSphere and see if somehow someway he could get the word out to Novak’s camp about the potential for staying there during the Olympics.

As expected, Courier, who is not shy and never hesitates to share his opinions, was very interesting and informative. He spent a lot of time talking about the immense challenges Coco Gauff has been having with her serve and her bold move to replace her mechanical coach with one of the top serving coaches in the world only one week before the start of the U.S. Open. Here is Courier showing how he would correct Coco’s ball toss which he says has been the most damaging technical flaw of her serve.

After answering questions in great detail about why tennis players have more power and control these days and how string technology has changed so much over the years we had the opportunity to take a picture with him. I purposely waited towards the end for Heather and I to take our picture with him because if I got the nerve to talk to him about The TenniSphere I didn’t want to hold up other people from having their picture taken.

I was admittedly a little nervous when we got up to him but I kept telling myself to follow Jeff Bezos’ regret minimization approach to life which is to live life with as few regrets as possible as people overwhelmingly regret far more what they didn’t do than the actions they took in life. Plus, I also thought about the ChatGPT request I made to develop a whole marketing plan to get Novak to the court and all of the steps to make that happen when right in front of me was someone who without question could gain access to him.

Gary Carmell with Jim Courier

I decided that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain so I inquired if I could ask him a question after he was done taking pictures and he said sure and told me to ask it right then and there. I explained to Jim that we built a beautiful tennis court in Southern California, not far from Carson where the Olympics will hold the tennis matches and that we would love to have Novak stay at our place and train. I then pulled out my phone and showed him pictures of The TenniSphere and this is Jim Courier looking at the photos.

Gary Carmell, Jim Courier and Heather Carmell

I’m delighted to report that Mr. Courier was immensely impressed by what he saw such that he took a picture of the image on my phone that also had the web address at the top and he said he would work on getting the information to people in Novak’s camp. I offered to text him my number so someone could get back to me but he didn’t want to do that to protect his privacy. He said that Novak’s team is incredibly resourceful and adept at getting to people if they want something so they would find me if they were interested.

I have no idea if anything will come of it but I do know that if I didn’t say anything to Jim Courier then absolutely nothing will come of it. Now that he has seen it, he has a picture of it in his phone, and knows the website address, there is now a glimmer of hope. Plus, in the back of my mind, Jim Courier is not only a great tennis personality for his incredible knowledge of the game but for his access to top players and their teams which enables him to gain further insights to help his commentary be even more valuable to the viewers. Given this, by reaching out to Novak’s camp for something Novak may find incredibly valuable can only be beneficial to Courier as it would gain further favor with Novak and his team which may translate to better access in the future. At least that is how my strategic, and very hopeful, mind is gaming this out from my very self-centered perspective.

Hopefully Courier will take the next step, Novak’s team will be very interested such that they reach out to me, Novak excitedly wants to pursue it, and finally, he is healthy enough to actually compete three years from now for Serbia in the 2028 Summer Olympics. If anyone can do it at 41 years old it would be Djokovic. 

Just as Novak will keep his eye on the prize of pursuing his second gold medal in 2028, Heather and I will be doing the same in terms of having him stay at The TenniSphere as he pursues his next most important milestone.

Whatever happens I’m just glad I mustered the courage to talk to Courier about it as I know I would have regretted not having done so given how well connected he is and how passionate he is about the sport. A two minute conversation with Courier could end up being far more valuable than hours and hours of trying to implement a very involved and time consuming marketing plan to attract Novak to The TenniSphere.

Only time will tell if something materializes from our Courier interaction but the die has been cast and it feels good to have taken this first step.