Ajla Tomljanović is sitting with her father, Ratko, and other family members eating dinner at Piccola Cucina in New York City.
It’s the eve of Tomljanović’s third-round match at the U.S. Open against Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion who is playing in her final tournament before she “evolves” away from tennis.
The mood is light. Ajla comments how her sister, Hana, is the biggest Serena fan in the family.
The camera focuses on Ratko, explaining how he won a soccer match in Yugoslavia where the 5,000 fans in the crowd were cheering against his team. It’s a parallel to Ajla’s situation. The major difference — more than 20,000 people in Arthur Ashe Stadium cheering for Serena.
“Hey guys, we are f—–,” Ratko said with the table exploding in laughter.
Tomljanović played the match of her career, defeating Williams in three sets, 7-5, 6-7, 6-1. For Paul Martin, the executive producer of Netflix’s “Break Point” documentary series on professional tennis, his favorite scene from Season 1 is the dinner with the Tomljanović family.
“You couldn’t have manifested that to happen,” Martin told The Athletic.
On Wednesday, Part 2 of Season 1 of “Break Point” is released on Netflix. Part 1 was released on Jan. 13 with five episodes. The series began at the 2022 Australian Open with Part 1’s final episode concluding at Roland Garros. Part 2 — also consisting of five episodes — starts at Wimbledon and ends at the ATP and WTA Tour Finals.
“Break Point” comes after the commercial success of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” series about Formula One. The show gave a North American audience a behind-the-scenes look at F1 drivers as people.
While motorsports are different from tennis, a similar model applies to “Break Point.” Give sports fans access to tennis’ major characters.
“There’s a lot of stuff that people will see that otherwise they never would,” Tomljanović told The Athletic. “Letting people fill in those moments when usually you’re alone with your team, it’s precious as an athlete.”
Part 1 serves as an introduction to the players starring in the series but also to the sport itself. Many of the episodes consist of explanations of tennis rules (like, what is a set?) to how tournaments work (what is a draw?). Part 2 goes deeper into the stories of Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the tour finals.
Netflix began filming “Break Point” at the 2022 Australian Open. When they released Part 1, Netflix was in post-production for Part 2. Martin said that the team found its stride in Part 2.
“We had an understanding of the world, the characters, and access was opening up,” Martin said. “All these worlds are different. We never go in and say to ourselves, ‘We’re going to make the exact same show.’ The athletes are different, the world is different, the geography is different. You have to develop that real understanding of the world before you can really figure out what the best version of the show is.”
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A premise of Season 1 is tennis being in a transition phase. For years, giants of the game like Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic dominated the sport. They captured the Slams, the big tournaments. 2022 provided a glimpse into tennis without these legends, when Williams and Federer retired.
“Break Point” offers a sample of the next generation of tennis players. Season 1 looks at Americans Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe, 2022 U.S. Open champion Carlos Alcaraz, Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime, Norway’s Casper Ruud, Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas, Australia’s Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis, Italy’s Matteo Berrettini, 2022 U.S. Open champion Iga Świątek, Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, Spain’s Paula Badosa, Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka and Greece’s Maria Sakkari. For those new to tennis, these players include many of the current winners and personalities of the sport.
“An Ajla Tomljanović is just as interesting as Rafa or Roger,” Martin said. “She’s got the struggles, the background. We’ve been successful at tapping into the human element to tell those human stories.”
Trying to usurp the old guard fuels many of these athletes’ motivations. When Fritz defeated Nadal to win the 2022 BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, it was — and remains — his best tournament win to date. With cameras showing Fritz chatting with coach Paul Annacone and his physio about potentially withdrawing from the final due to an ankle injury, a lot weighed on the then-24-year-old’s mind. Fritz didn’t want to regret not having the opportunity to win an ATP Masters 1000 event.
As “Break Point” shows, winning in tennis is fleeting.
“It has to be one of the most mentally tough and mentally draining sports you play,” Fritz told The Athletic. “It just feels all the time like every match you’re going to play is the most important match you’ve ever played. That’s so stressful.”
Ajla Tomljanović’s win over Serena Williams at the U.S. Open factors prominently in the second half of Season 1 of Netflix’s “Break Point.” (Al Bello / Getty Images)
The connection between Parts 1 and 2 of “Break Point” is the mental toll of tennis. It’s an individual sport, meaning the player experiences all the joys of winning and the full burden of defeat. At the 2022 Australian Open, hometown favorite Tomljanović lost to the eighth-seeded Badosa in the first round. There’s a scene in the bowels of Margaret Court Arena, where Tomljanović declares to her coaches she wants to retire from tennis. In Part 2, “Break Point” shows the challenging year Sabalenka, one of the game’s top players going into the year, had in 2022. She couldn’t serve in Adelaide, losing in her first match while plagued by double faults. She lost early at the year’s first two Slams, breaking down crying after her third-round defeat at Roland Garros to Italy’s Camila Giorgi. The camera zeroes in on her coaches consoling Sabalenka, and she discusses her struggles dealing with the loss of her father Sergey in 2019 along with the war in Ukraine as a Belarusian athlete.
“Break Point” doesn’t hold back letting the viewers into a player’s head. In Episode 4, Badosa shares her struggles with anxiety and depression. In Episode 6, the first of Part 2, Kyrgios reveals that he checked into a psychiatric ward in London following a loss at Wimbledon in 2019 and contemplated suicide.
“It just came from getting to a point where Nick really wanted to share, really wanted to open up and really wanted people to understand him a little bit more,” Martin said.
Fans watch the matches on TV. They see players shake hands at the net and post-match interviews. Prior to “Break Point,” there wasn’t access to players in the intimate, lonely moments after a match. When Tiafoe lost to Alcaraz in the U.S. Open semifinal last year, fans saw the emotion from the American in his brief interview on-court.
“I let you down,” Tiafoe said, tears in his eyes.
But “Break Point” takes viewers into the locker room, where Tiafoe sits alone, the sting of defeat still fresh. After somber conversations with his coaches, Tiafoe goes out into the hallway to speak with former First Lady Michelle Obama. Tiafoe and Alcaraz share a congratulatory embrace in the locker room.
“Go be No. 1 in the world. You deserve it,” Tiafoe said on-screen to Alcaraz.
Netflix renewed “Break Point” for Season 2 and production is underway. It joins the plethora of sports documentaries on Netflix that have lasted more than one season, including golf’s “Full Swing” and F1’s “Drive to Survive.”
Whether “Break Point” will bring new fans to tennis like “Drive to Survive” is credited for doing for F1 remains to be seen. Part 1 of “Break Point” did not make the global top 10 of Netflix’s most-watched shows in its first week (Jan. 16 to Jan. 22). Season 4 of “Drive to Survive” spent two weeks inside the global top 10.
Martin said there’s room to improve with “Break Point.” He wants future seasons to focus on the players and their stories. This follows the structure in “Drive to Survive” and “Full Swing,” where each episode revolves around a driver or golfer, with the event as a backdrop.
“Last year, we were behind the schedule from a production perspective,” Martin said. “This year, we had a lot more time to think about how we can tell these stories. I think what you’ll see this year (in Season 2) is less sort of event-focused and more character-focused.”
It’s the first time tennis has experienced something like “Break Point,” seeing the people behind the players on court. While it’s uncertain if the show will last beyond season 2, the sport is leaning on innovative ways to reach fans as it pivots to a new era.
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(Photo of Frances Tiafoe and Carlos Alcaraz at the 2022 U.S. Open: Eduardo MunozAlvarez / VIEWpress via Getty Images)
