The sport draws its fascination from the fight and drama on the pitch. This is one of the problems with “Break Point”. For the second season, Alexander Zverev, of all people, was chosen as a potential oddsmaker, who has made many slip-ups recently.
A year ago, Aryna Sabalenka won her first major title at the Australian Open.
Hannah McKay / Reuters
A year ago, a new expression was making the rounds in the tennis scene at the Australian Open: the Netflix curse. He referred to a peculiarity that fired the imagination of journalists and players. In 2023, after the first week in Melbourne, there was hardly anyone left in the tournament who had played a role in the first season of the Netflix series “Break Point”.
To a certain extent, Netflix now felt compelled to produce a filmic counter-representation. The first episode of the second season, which has been online since last Wednesday, is entitled “The Curse” and follows the story of Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka.
She obviously had one or two doubts about whether she should let a camera accompany her in the hunt for her first Grand Slam title. Her fitness trainer Jason Stacy says at the beginning of the documentary: “There are always a lot of distractions at a slam. You have to find a way to avoid it.” The constant accompaniment of a camera is not necessarily helpful.
Sabalenka took part in the end – and promptly won the Australian Open. At the beginning of the film she says that her father, a former ice hockey player, was driven by the idea that she could celebrate her first major title before her 25th birthday. She finally managed to do this four months before the festival. The father didn’t live to see that. He died suddenly in November 2019 at the age of 43. This gives the film a tear-filled, goosebumps moment.
Trailer for the Netflix documentary “Break Point” from inside the tennis tour.
Youtube
Even the sometimes conservative SRF has discovered the genre for itself with “The Pressure Game”.
Sports documentaries thrive on these personal scenes. And the still young genre is enjoying increasing popularity. It started with “Drive to Survive”, the Netflix production that helped Formula 1 gain great popularity during the pandemic and became a model for various copycat products. There are now similar formats about the Tour de France, the basketball player Michael Jordan (“The Last Dance”) and the footballer David Beckham.
In Switzerland, the ice hockey channel MySports has gained respect and profile with documentaries about the SCL Tigers and HC Ambri-Piotta. And now even the sometimes conservative SRF has discovered the genre for itself with “The Pressure Game”, a multi-part series from the inside of the Swiss national football team.
Trailer for the SRF documentary “The Pressure Game”.
Youtube
The essence of the success of such documentaries can probably be found in the statement from the second season of “Break Point”: “We are always looking for heroes, this is where stars are born.” In addition to Sabalenka, the focus of the season is on the Spanish world number two Carlos Alcaraz and the German Alexander Zverev.
When the Australian Open starts again in Melbourne, Alcaraz will probably once again be one of the toughest challengers to series winner Novak Djokovic. Dominic Stricker from Bern, Rafael Nadal and the Australian Nick Kyrgios, who played a leading role in the first season of “Break Point”, have already withdrawn from the tournament.
The extent to which Zverev is a popular figure and ratings maker for Netflix is questionable. After various slip-ups on and off the tennis court, the image of the German-Russian has been badly damaged. Zverev has to stand trial in Germany because of allegations of domestic violence.
Boris Becker returns to his preferred role as a TV analyst.
Youtube
It’s definitely film material, there’s a spectacle – and there doesn’t seem to be much standing in the way of a continuation of the Netflix series. But “Break Point” urgently needs more attention. The success of the lavishly produced first season fell short of expectations.
One of the strengths of such documentaries would be that they repeatedly capture details and make them accessible to the general public that are usually hidden from them. But “Break Point” has so far only inadequately met this requirement. A lot remains on the surface and predictable. Attentive followers of the tennis scene hardly learn anything that they are not already familiar with.
The format also contains one or two embarrassments in its first season, such as a subtitle in the article about Serena Williams, who has resigned, where a poster of a supporter describes her as a “goat” – i.e. the “greatest of all time”. , which is translated as “the goat of the tennis circus”.
When Wawrinka told Rune, who was not yet 20, not to behave like a toddler
But there are also deliberately amusing scenes, such as the one when Stan Wawrinka advises the Dane Holger Rune in Paris-Bercy in autumn 2022 not to behave like a toddler on the tennis court. In the documentary, Rune, who was not yet 20 years old at the time, counters the Swiss man’s reprimand with a smile. «Old people give advice to young people, that’s life. But sometimes old people have to accept that young people challenge them.”
The meeting between Stan Wawrinka and Holger Rune in the video.
Youtube
Rune is part of the extended circle of title contenders in Melbourne and is sure to continue to make headlines: on Netflix and in real life. He has the playing potential to win major titles on the men’s tour. The Dane will now be looked after by Boris Becker and Severin Lüthi, Roger Federer’s long-time coach. Lüthi recently told the NZZ that after Federer’s resignation he made a list of the players with whom he would be interested in working. “Holger was one of them.”
So what does “Break Point” teach us? A sports documentary, no matter how professionally produced, can only remain a reflection of life. The sport draws its fascination not from the voyeuristic view through the keyhole, but from the fight and the drama on the pitch. Ultimately, sports documentaries are nothing more than expensive propaganda for products that actually don’t need propaganda and speak for themselves. In any case, Novak Djokovic did not open his doors to the filmers. He knows: Nothing is better for promoting your own cause than Siege.