The Rally returns today, with a discussion between freelance tennis writer Kamakshi Tandon and I on the 2016 season that just was. Below is the first of three parts.

Hi Kamakshi,

We’ve done it. We’ve made it all the way to another offseason. Or off-month, anyway. That’s still a ridiculously short amount of time to be away from the game, for both players and fans, but I’m happy that there aren’t as many complaints about the schedule’s length as there once were. Maybe it helps that the game’s aging legends—Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams—have reached the point where they can pull the plug whenever it’s physically necessary and no one is going to say a whole lot about it. They’ve earned the right to make their own schedules.

I enjoyed the 2016 season as much as any other; good and bad, it was an especially eventful one. But my attitude toward the sport, and sports in general, was different this year because of the U.S. presidential election. Games offered no escape or symbolic triumphs this time. I’m not sure how you felt in Canada, but to me, tweeting tennis scores and results didn’t seem like an adequate response to what was happening in the United States. The election made me understand the limits of using sports as a metaphor for life.

That said, we’re here to talk tennis, and there’s plenty of it to discuss. This is the time of year when I look back and realize how much a single season can contain. The match-fixing story that broke during the Australian Open? The Cinderella saga of Marcus Willis at Wimbledon? Novak Djokovic doing what no man had done since Rod Laver? Monica Puig winning Puerto Rico’s first Olympic gold medal in any sport? Juan Martin del Potro playing his first match in two years in Delray Beach? Maria Sharapova standing up in front of that ugly hotel-ballroom carpet to tell us she had failed a drug test? Yes, all of it happened in 2016.

Let me start by asking what you thought the biggest story of 2016 was. I can cite two that stand out for me, for opposing reasons.

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The shock has worn off a little by now, but for newsworthiness, Sharapova’s suspension was the big one, and the one that put tennis on the front pages. It was certainly bad news in a lot of ways; tennis lost a major name, and there was a lot of speculation at the time about how clean the sport was, how transparent it was, how insular it was, how strong its testing was. But I actually thought there was a positive side to the Sharapova ban. It showed that tennis could catch a star, and was willing to hand her a stiff—too stiff, really—punishment. When all was said and done, I thought the time that Sharapova got pretty much fit the crime.

For everyday fans of the sport, the surprising rise of Andy Murray and Angelique Kerber to No. 1 was a happy antidote to Sharapova’s fall from grace. They dethroned two champions, in Djokovic and Serena Williams, who had seemed invincible at times over the last few seasons.

If I have to choose, I think Murray’s leap to the top at age 29—and his season as a whole, on court and off—was slightly more significant and worthy of respect. He spent the first half of the year sticking to his progressive guns when it came to gender equity in tennis. He’s a pioneer in that regard, and it couldn’t have been easy to go against his ATP peers on the subject; if it were, someone in the 40-odd history of the tour would have done it before him. Then Murray spent the second half of the year showing those peers, and the rest of us, that thoughtful males can finish first. His sprint to the finish line, and the 24 straight matches he won to cross it, was especially impressive. Murray set his sights on No. 1—somewhere he had never been—and then, in match after match, he found a way to get there.

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I know that Djokovic’s French Open win, and the Djoker Slam that he completed that day in Paris, is the accomplishment that we’ll remember longest from 2016. But Murray did what I like most about sports: He made me believe that anything is possible again. His No. 1 finish rounded out the Big Four era in a way that made sense, and in a way that I never really expected.

What were the big stories for you, Kamakshi?

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Hi Steve,

I'm leading with two historic accomplishments. First, Djokovic's victory at the French Open; not only did he complete the career Slam, but he held all four majors. I agree with those who say that the four Slams in a row should have received more attention, though unlike some of the more thin-skinned Djokovic fans, I don’t quite know why they didn’t. Normally we relish playing such things up.

My only theory is that because his long-running pursuit of the title had become so familiar, and the run at the calendar Slam was so publicized, the in-between achievement of holding all the majors at once got squeezed behind. It was similar for Serena Williams, whose Serena Slam got little attention because the bigger story was her quest for No. 22.

And that brings me to my second: Serena winning Grand Slam No. 22, tying Steffi Graf for the most singles majors in Open era history. I will note, though, that I consider the proper record to be Margaret Court's 24 Slams. As Billie Jean King has noted, Open era distinctions aren't as relevant for the women because they rarely turned pro during the amateur era. (The argument about diluted fields in Australia is pertinent, but unconnected to this point.)

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Looking at the year in general, you're spot on that it had even more troughs and peaks than usual. The bad press dominated, as it tends to do: match fixing, Sharapova's positive test, sexism controversies, injury-plagued seasons for Federer and Nadal, government investigations of national federations. As you said, the controversies had their positives. What they showed us, once again, is that tennis policing is neither that good nor that bad. But more is required, and the powers that be need regular ear twisting to keep doing their jobs. At the same time, we also had a torrent of feel-good stories that told us that persistence pays off. Though there were plenty to choose from, Willis and Puig’s triumphs were the most prominent.

The atmosphere for the match between Federer and Willis on Centre Court was like no other I've ever seen. It was as entertaining as an exhibition, but was grounded by the tension of an actual match that had real implications. And, oddly, if I could have picked one player to win the gold medal before the Summer Olympics in Rio, it would have been Puig. I don't know if there's another player who makes representing her tiny nation such a big goal. I was also taken by Shuai Zhang's surge at the Australian Open. She decided to play the tournament after considering retirement, and proceeded to reach the quarterfinals. “You are patient to listen to me, because I'm a winner now,” she told reporters in Beijing in October.

Even some of the biggest stories of the season fall into this category, like Murray's rise to No. 1. Two of them converged when Del Potro led Argentina to its first Davis Cup title. The Argentine came into the final playing like a Top 5 talent, and the final against Croatia couldn't have been scripted in more gripping fashion.

During the tie, you tweeted, “And we’ve reached the ‘Why would we ever want to change anything about Davis Cup?’ phase of the weekend.” Changes actually seem to happen quite regularly. Though critics often say that Davis Cup is great despite its problems, it's worth noting that those very things—home and away ties, best-of-five sets, nationalism, the demands of the competition—were responsible for producing this final. If you're looking for a sports analogy, we've seen that it isn’t a great idea to indulge in a desire for change before understanding what that change is.

Which brings me to a question for you, Steve. What significant developments did you see in tennis this season, both at the top of the sport and across it?