A Battle of Americans, and Podcast Hosts, Looms for Keys and Pegula in Melbourne

Is there anybody out there who doesn’t have a podcast?

Can’t count Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys in that group, and tennis fans are better off because of that fact. The pair of Top-10 talents joined forces with Jennifer Brady and Desirae Krawczyk to form the Player’s Box Podcast four months ago. 120 days and 24 episodes later, we are about the witness the first Grand Slam round of 16 clash featuring podcast co-hosts (unnoficial stat).

Pegula was asked about it afer her Day 7 victory over Oksana Selekhmeteva and, spoken like a true podcast host, says she hopes the buzz will help generate some good numbers for episode No.24.

“Maybe we should tell Des [Krawczyk],” she said. “She’s here. She can go live on the pod during our singles match. Actually I think we’re going to try and record tomorrow since we have a day off tomorrow to get our episode for next week.

“We kind of saw we were in the draw. I honestly didn’t really realize it until last round that if we both win, we would play each other… it doesn’t really change that much.

“But, yeah, maybe it will help the numbers on the pod. If we film tomorrow, we can kind of market that it was us, recording before we had to play each other.”

Keys also talked about this special occasion for “The Players’s Box” podcast. She said they plan to film tomorrow, an off day ahead of their Day 9 Clash.

“We are filming tomorrow,” she said. “She wants to make me eat her disgusting apple pie with cheese on top of it if I lose, which I said I refuse, so she’s going to have to think of something else.

“We’re both going to try to think of something to kind of commemorate this moment. I mean, hopefully we have more times where we meet later in tournaments where we get to play each other. We can see how this one goes and then hopefully be able to capitalize on it and then see how we want to do it in the future, as well.”

Defending champion Keys notched her tenth consecutive Australian Open win on Day 7, taking out Karolina Pliskova, 6-3, 6-3. She owns a 2-1 lifetime edge over Keys. No matter what happens on the court the real winner will be the pod. What a time to be alive!