Welcome to The Racquet
The goal of The Racquet is to drill through the noise and the bullshit in tennis coverage and deliver concise, fun and easy to understand analysis and commentary. I make exhaustive notes when watching matches, and work with some of the very best analysts in pro tennis, and then aim to distill the most interesting and important bits into short and hopefully easy-to-digest chunks of information, usually with visual explanations via GIF and/or drawings. Hopefully the more of The Racquet you read, the more you’ll come away with a superpower of picking up on player strengths & weaknesses, strategy, matchup dynamics, and momentum shifts as they happen live. Or maybe you just don’t have time to watch as much tennis as you’d like and want to be caught up on the most important bits.
Why Subscribe?
The Racquet is sent out twice a week.
If you’re a free subscriber you’ll get the Thursday update, which usually focuses on something topical or bigger-picture going on in the tennis world to keep you up to date. Here’s a recent example focusing on Vasek Pospisil calling the ATP Chairman a ‘f*cking a**hole’, mid-match in Miami, and what the bigger picture means for the structure of pro tennis.
If you’re a paid subscriber you’ll get that free update as well as special match analysis issues each Sunday/Monday for every big final. Here are a couple of examples of what to expect from the analysis here (2021 Wimbledon Final) and here (new playstyles in men’s tennis via Medvedev and Zverev). For an idea of some of the occasional bigger picture stuff, for when there are lulls in the calendar or no finals, here’s something I wrote on the evolution of movement in tennis:
A subscription to The Racquet costs $6.99 a month or $69 per year.
The other goal of The Racquet is to try and work out the best ways to drag tennis into the 21st century, and to help as many new fans feel welcome as possible. Here’s some of what I’ve written on the future of tennis, part 1 and part 2. There isn’t a schedule for these kinds of pieces, they usually take a bit longer to write and will come out sporadically throughout the year.
Who writes this?
The Racquet was created and is written by me (Matt). I've played tennis since I was 5 years old and slowly graduated to playing varsity tennis at university. Over the last 5-10 years I’ve been thinking a lot about tennis strategy, matchup dynamics, how play-styles have evolved, different surface strategies, and where this sport is going. And because I’m frankly awful at selling myself, here is what a few of my readers have to say:
“As someone who doesn’t really know so much about tennis analysis/strategy, I appreciate that you break everything down in a very easy to understand manner. Sometimes your insight changes the way I view certain players or matches. Also your meme content/edits are gold.”
“As a tactical analyst myself, I rely on Matt's insight on more than on any other professional or independent tennis medium.” (Mert Ertunga, tactical analyst and an ex-Davis Cup captain)
“Eye opening observations and great to-the-point analysis. Many understand tennis better thanks to you.”
You can find me on Twitter here.
Email: infotheracquet@gmail.com
