Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, court speed became a hot and divisive topic, the tennis calendar’s imbalance became close to farcical, and the race to the WTA Tour Finals narrowed.

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How did Roger Federer start a court-speed conspiracy theory?

When Roger Federer sat down to record a Laver Cup edition of Andy Roddick’s podcast, “Served,” he probably didn’t expect to start a conversation that would lead to world No. 3 Alexander Zverev claiming that tournaments deliberately favor Zverev’s rivals, world No. 1 and No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner.

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When asked about tennis court speed, Federer launched into the potted history of how tennis surfaces — clay, grass, and hard — have homogenized in the past 30 years. He said tennis would be best if the best players had to figure out the same opponents on “lightning fast” and “super slow” courts. He said that ball speed and court speed make everything basically the same.

And then he lit a fire.

“I understand the safety net that the tournament directors see, making the surface slower, because the weaker player, he has to hit extra-amazing shots to beat Sinner, whereas if it’s quick, he can only maybe blast a few at the right time and he gets past.

“So that’s when the tournament directors, they’re like ‘Ahhh I kind of like having Sinner and Alcaraz in the final.’”

A few days later, Zverev was asked about court speed at the Shanghai Masters, which has seen a major slowdown this year, according to Court Pace Index (CPI) data.