Ben Rothenberg
Ben Rothenberg covers professional tennis with a focus on how power, culture and business shape the sport on and off the court. His newsletter and website Bounces is the current center of his work, giving him room for independent reporting that mixes detailed tournament coverage with scrutiny of the sport’s institutions.
Professional tennis, culture and controversy
Rothenberg’s reporting distinguishes itself by treating tennis as a global industry and cultural arena, not just a sequence of matches. Across Bounces and major outlets, he writes on topics such as gambling sponsorships and betting’s spread through the tours, including tournament deals with firms like Kalshi and the growing visibility of brands such as 1xBet around the sport. He has reported extensively on allegations of abuse involving a leading men’s player, following the story from early interviews with the accuser through ongoing legal challenges to his work, and using that case to examine how tennis handles player conduct and safeguarding.
His track record includes uncovering plagiarism in a prominent Wimbledon yearbook and early, high-profile coverage of anti-doping violations, establishing him as a reporter who is willing to test the limits of access and confront powerful figures and organizations when integrity is at stake.
Tournament beats and Grand Slam coverage
Rothenberg has spent years on the road at the sport’s biggest events, and his pieces reflect that long familiarity with the tours’ rhythms. His writing treats Grand Slams and other major tournaments as ecosystems, bringing together on-court analysis, locker‑room dynamics, scheduling and travel burdens, and the business decisions that shape events. In Bounces he files dispatches from the likes of the U.S. Open that go beyond results to look at crowd behavior, facilities, accreditation and the changing relationship between tournaments, broadcasters and data and betting partners. He often structures coverage around a week or a fortnight at a specific event, using recurring notes, interviews and observations to build a textured picture of how a tournament feels from inside.
Player narratives and emerging stars
Alongside investigations, Rothenberg writes narrative features that track how players move through the sport’s hierarchy.
He has profiled established champions and lesser‑known figures, including deaf players, wheelchair champions and juniors backed by unusual patrons, showing how biography, privilege and adversity intersect with performance. His book‑length biography of Naomi Osaka reflects a sustained interest in how a player’s public image, commercial presence and personal struggles are negotiated across tours, media and fandom. Recent Bounces pieces such as “Alex Eala Is the Most Popular Player in Tennis Right Now” use rising names to explore questions of national identity, diaspora audiences and how popularity is measured in an era of social platforms and streaming.
Even in shorter tournament pieces he tends to frame matches within broader arcs - shifts in confidence, coaching changes, injuries and off‑court pressures - rather than purely tactical breakdowns.
Newsletter, podcast and multimedia work
Bounces sits alongside Rothenberg’s long‑running audio and broadcast work, which extends his reporting beyond print. As host of the tennis podcast No Challenges Remaining, he conducts interviews with players, coaches, fellow journalists and tour executives, often returning to subjects in both audio and written formats when a story evolves.
His professional bios note frequent appearances as a tennis analyst on international television and radio networks, where he is called on to explain current controversies, rule changes and the broader context around major matches. Earlier in his career he built a large body of tennis coverage for outlets such as The New York Times and Racquet, with longform features that dig into social and cultural issues around the sport. Taken together, his newsletter, podcast and external work form a consistent profile: a reporter who knows the tours intimately, is comfortable with complex, contentious stories, and is most interested in tennis when it intersects with larger questions of power, fairness and how global sport is run.
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