Early Round MAILBAG (Dimitrov's Slice, Sinner's Heat Solution & Dan Evans Snub) | Wimbledon 2026

**Gill Gross** (0:01)
Hey, everyone, Gill Gross here, and it is time for another Mailbag, where I answer your questions, hot takes, observations, and ultimately your comments about tennis or anything else. Wimbledon 2026, early round edition. It's been a relatively calm couple of days at Wimbledon. I think at least it feels that way. Maybe that's just relative to all of the other distractions that have existed in the sports world in the last couple of days. Transactional chaos across both the NBA and the NHL, and of course the knockout stage beginning at this year's World Cup. There have been some requests for me to give a little bit of soccer. You do not want my analysis, I assure you. But I will say, Harry Kane's heroics to put England through yesterday, just outstanding, and I've been watching Harry Kane for a long time because I actually was and still am a pretty casual Tottenham Hotspur fan.
But the peak of my fandom was in the good old days of Harry Kane.
And man, the ability for this guy to put every single chance he has under the back of the net seemingly has always been sensational. I mean, you get Harry Kane a chance, he's putting it in. And that's all I have to say about that. The United States have changed my world, have changed everybody's world. And it's not just the result. It's not just the fact that they won a knockout stage match for the first time, I believe since 2002, 2-0 over Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's not just that, it's the way they're doing it. It's the way they're playing, completely unrecognizable from anything I've ever seen from the US men's national team. They are not scrapping or gridding or toughing or defending their ways to victory. No. No, they are dominating in these games, at least the meaningful ones, save for the third group stage match. They are dominating. They are possessing the ball. They are creating chances creatively and skillfully in a way that I have never seen before. So I am very excited. I am enthused. I thank every member of this US men's national team, and I especially thank Argentina and Mauricio Pochettino for transforming this into something that it's never been before. Of course, everybody is talking about the red card. I just want to say that slow motion instant replay in sports is somewhat of a plague that has stricken many... Again, I am not talking about soccer here. I am not talking about just this one incident. I am talking about a lot of instances where bad decisions have been made as a result of technology that is supposed to make bad decisions less frequent.
Because sports happen very quickly and context is very important when it comes to, I think, especially assessing a foul of this nature. What was happening within the game? And what did it look like in real time? And all of that. And I know I am not the first to say it. It's what Thierry Henry said in the studio and it's what Stu Holden said in the booth on the American Broadcast and the Rules Analyst, whose name escapes me, also agreed.
The flow ballagoon foul looks bad when you take, when you zoom in and slow it down and also chop it up in a way where you don't really see the lead up to that play. The fact is it was not a forceful challenge. It was not an out of control challenge. It was not an unreasonable challenge. He just put his foot down in the wrong spot. He put his foot down in the wrong spot. I think for that reason, it should have been a yellow. He certainly came down on the back of that poor guy's ankle and it rolled over in a way that looked really nasty and really dangerous and there could have been harm and there could have been an injury and I think everybody agrees on that part of it. But this is not about intent because intent doesn't matter. We all know that you can have an accidental red card that is within the rules. It doesn't matter what the intent is. What does matter is the nature of the challenge and was it inherently out of control? Was it inherently dangerous? Not one person in real time and it wasn't even a yellow card in real time until they went back and looked at it.
Not one person in real time sees that play from Flo Balagun and thinks, oh wow, what a reckless and dangerous tackle that was. No, get out of here. So that's unfortunate. And I'm a bit worried, not going to lie, because it does seem like the drop down at the striker position from Flo Balagun to Ricardo Pepe is significant.