The Racquet Is Back! 🎾

Update from Matt - How to subscribe, what to expect, clay & grass seasons, moar tennis

I’m very excited to say that I’m now able to devote more time to The Racquet, which means a lot more stuff coming your way.

But first, a very quick refresher for some of the newer subscribers.

Whats the goal?

The Racquet’s mission 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 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.

Subscribing to The Racquet is like joining a club for people who want to go deeper into this sport than what you get on TV or in traditional news articles.

How’s this going to work?

Starting tomorrow, the Racquet will be sent out twice weekly. And there are two options.

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 featuring 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. Tomorrow’s issue will be all about why flatter hitters have it more difficult on clay, to coincide with Monte Carlo.

If you’re a paid subscriber you’ll get that free Thursday update as well as special match analysis issues each and every Sunday (or occasionally Monday depending on timezone) covering tournament finals. Here are a couple of examples of ‘micro not macro analysis’ here (Djokovic vs Medvedev) and here (Nadal vs Medvedev). For an idea of some of the occasional macro stuff, for when there are lulls in the calendar or no final, here’s something I wrote on the future of tennis here, and the evolution of movement in men’s tennis here:

Matthew Willis @mattracquet

A thread on hard court sliding & movement (ATP)🎾🏃‍♂️ 1/ There have been plenty of lightning fast athletes throughout tennis history. But today’s game, alongside its high-margin, spin-laden power, has spawned a fascinating development in terms of on-the-run hard court movement

A subscription to The Racquet will normally cost $7 a month or $65 per year. But for the first month, or until the Rome Masters, both weekly issues will go out to everyone so that I can get the word out.

I also wanted a way to show my appreciation for those who have already been along for the ride (i.e you reading this right now) by giving you a sort of early adopter price that will never increase. For the next 48 hours, you can subscribe at $6 per month or $55 a year. Once 48 hours expires that early adopter tier will be gone forever. This is a thank you for loyal readership so far (I’m also thinking of a way to send out a small welcome gift for the first few hundred subscribers, so stay tuned). You’ve been vital in creating a brilliant little community of passionate tennis fans & players that I feel very grateful for. The more support The Racquet gets, the more work I can produce.

Alternatively if you like my work and have the means to spend more more than the pricing above, you can also become a ‘founding member’ when selecting what type of subscription you’d like (this has the same access as a normal paid subscription):

If you’re a student, and money is tight, email me — infotheracquet@gmail.com — and I’ll be extremely happy to sort you out with a free subscription.

Really looking forward to writing and thinking more about tennis.

See you tomorrow.

— Matt

You can find me on Twitter here.

Any questions: infotheracquet@gmail.com