Daily Bagel: Players talk the talk

The Daily Bagel is your dose of the interesting reporting, writing and quipping from around the Internet.

• Fun times at the IMG Australian Open party in the above video. The tennis world is a good-looking group.

• The ATP players meeting is all the talk in Melbourne. Players are being asked about it left and right and, rather surprisingly, everyone's been willing to talk about it despite calls to keep the discussions behind closed doors. The Tennis Space interviews former ATP Player Council President Ivan Ljubicic about the current issues and his answers are revealing. "It has to be the winners’ tour," Ljubicic explained when asked about the distribution of prize money. "Whoever wins makes money. You cannot raise the prize money for first round, say, get 30,000. That’s not the way it should be. You have to win in order to get something. If you’re good, you’re good. Some players did complain but OK, go out there, get better, practice and win that money. It’s not like it’s written on the check “Roger Federer,” it’s written “winner." If he’s so good, what can you do? Try harder."

• Even before she lost on Tuesday, Pat Cash was feeling sorry for Sam Stosur. "I don't think she's feeling at all comfortable," Cash observed. "She's a quiet girl from the Gold Coast who just wants to go out there, play her tennis and win the titles. I don't think she'd be too bothered if there wasn't any hoopla to go with everything."

• Jon Wertheim weighs in on the Nadal-Federer disagreement, with some interesting insight on the mutual respect of their rivalry.

• The New York Times is already looking toward tennis at the Olympics. Can't we all just focus on the Australian Open right now? It's just too much!

• John Isner got signed by Lacoste. I hope that means more boarding school pictures like this one.

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