Blogorama

It is July; the court is so hot you could fry an egg on it. As the late afternoon sets on two warriors who are battling for their lives one thing is clear, nobody wants to loose. These players have trained their whole lives for this moment, made countless sacrifices, and fought through adversity on more than one occasion. Sounds like a scene from the US Open right? Wrong, these are the players who are fighting for a couple hundred dollars in prize money but more importantly ranking points, and while the crowd consists of a few players and a few tennis fans from the local club there is no denying the importance of this tournament and every other tournament like this, I am talking about the USTA Pro Circuit.

There are two types of men’s tournaments on the USTA Pro Circuit, which include Futures and Challengers. Futures offer prize money starting at $10,000 and valuable ATP points, which help establish a world ranking. Challengers are the same concept but offer a larger amount of money and ATP points to the participants. The summer circuit of Futures and Challengers are, typically, the proving ground for young players or college players trying to establish themselves in the professional world of tennis. Futures and Challengers usually have players with ATP world rankings ranging from 150 to 1000. All events include qualifying tournaments in order to reach the maindraw where prize money and ATP points are earned. The summer circuit acts as a great opportunity and stepping stone for players to travel within one country and earn their way towards a higher ranking, as well as opportunities to play in more world-class events.

The summer circuit is not just a group of tennis players trying to become superstars. There is much more depth, and many more individual stories behind each person and what they are trying to achieve with their tennis and with themselves. For example, some players leave their homes and wont return for months struggling to earn enough money to get them to the next tournament in the next city. Other players are hopeful juniors with sponsors and contracts who will only play a few events to gain match-playing experience. Some players even use the circuit as a way to make money and operate a business with no revenue even coming from the tournament, but rather running a racket stringing business, or providing transportation from week to week. There are so many different characters and people that are trying to make it in some way or another. Another interesting dynamic to consider is where the locations of the tournaments are. The tournaments are not located in easy to travel and fun to visit cities throughout the country, but rather located in ghettos, farmlands, and small towns. Some of the cities on the Summer Circuit include: Peoria Illinois, Joplin Missouri, and Harlingen Texas.

I hope for this blog not to be just a report on results or a sports news blog on tennis, but rather a documentation of the real life grind that many world class athletes face; Athletes whom are not rewarded with huge contracts or multi-million dollar endorsement deals. The summer circuit truly is a dynamic place for players to interact, form relationships, deal with personal struggles on and off the court, and find their way to a tennis career. Sadly, in other cases, players must deal with the painful realization of giving up on a dream or simply losing the desire to even play tennis.

Tennis fans unite! For everything you could imagine and more relating to tennis head to the Topspin Tennis Blog. The blog is all about different aspects of the tennis game. It ranges from junior competitions, futures, and pro events to equipment talk and tennis movie reviews, this site has it all. The writer of the blog “Steve Bartholomew” considers himself a fan of tennis and lives in Surrey, United Kingdom. He ranks his favorite players as the sports hero/ humanitarian Andre Agassi and the sensational Roger Federer. His posts come about every month, reporting on the past few weeks of tennis results around the world, as well as the latest equipment talk for rackets, strings, and shoes. He writes a lot of his blog on the go, in which his Iphone and Blackberry enable him to do so. Topspin Tennis is an extremely comprehensive site, which makes it a must for any tennis fan.

Click here to see scary tennis from Rafa

Click here to see Andre make history

The above links are to two great contrasting stories I found on the site. The First one is about Rafael Nadal’s outstanding play at this year’s French Open, where he is demolishing the field one player at a time. It seems like nothing can stop Rafael at this year’s French Championship, it shows the “changing of the guard” in a way. Rafael, a young superstar who is the poster boy for the ATP tour contrasts the second blog which is about Andre Agassi completing the career grand slam, a feat that has only been accomplished by five people in the history of men’s tennis and happened at a time when Andre was considered one of the legends of the game. Agassi will go down as one of the greatest players of all time with help from his 1999 French Open win.

The Topspin Tennis blog focuses on a large area of tennis - everything to do with results and equipment. The blog is presented in a very journalistic style. I say that because it includes write-ups and stories about past tennis news and events. My blog will try to deal with more of the lifestyle that tennis players have to live when they are beginning or ending their careers on the lower level pro tournaments. The posts are easy to read and get great help with videos to accompany the stories of certain events. The actual writing may suffer at times because it is not always written from a computer, but there are not any noticeable half-hearted posts or stories. The writer has a lot of knowledge of news on tennis when it breaks from around the world. Anybody who is a fan of the game would benefit from checking out this site. The posts are pretty short which makes it easy to read a lot of different stories on a lot of different issues. My site will be different for the very opposite - my bog will not include the abundant number of posts that Topspin Tennis has, but rather more in-depth writing on a few specific topics.

It’s Time for Tennis at Topspin Tennis: http://topspintennisblog.blogspot.com/

I have always hated blogs. Why would I want to listen to what an average everyday person has to say on something? I have read more blogs in the past two weeks than I have ever read in my entire life. Okay, I admit I was wrong. I now realize that I can learn a lot from blogs and take them for what they are. It is these same average everyday people who probably know a lot more information than me on a variety of topics. By exploring blogs I can not only learn about a variety of issues but I can also feel involved and engaged in a conversation like way with the writers. One writer I have discovered that got me reading and has kept me hooked, Sean Randall from Tennis X. Sean engages me in all the important tennis news and even the unnecessary tennis news. Sean Randall analysis of the men’s draw at the French open is not what drew me to his posts but rather is honesty when writing about issues such as NBC’s lack of ability to cover live tennis.

In his post Good Luck Watching Nadal v. Djokovic in the U.S.; No Live TV Coverage! Sean states honestly and candidly what many tennis fans felt like this past weekend, that it sucks to be a tennis fan in the U.S. today.

On arguably one of the most appealing semifinal lineups of the year live coverage from the French Open today is non-existent here in the U.S. At least I haven’t found any. Not on my TV and I have like 800 channels!

Sean has an ability to use a real and honest voice to grab the reader’s attention. Words like “sucks” pull a large variety of readers in because of its place in common everyday conversation. Sean like myself spent a good amount of time searching through numerous channels only to realize what wasn’t being televised and state, “this sucks.” Using words such as “flipped” when referring to turning on the TV help create his casual voice “I just woke up, flipped on the Tennis Channel looking to catch what’s happening in the Novak Djokovic-Rafael Nadal match” his voice is very casual and honest which is a great reason for why his writing is easy to read and understand. In the same post Sean closes with the sentence

If the tournaments/Slams fail to make certain that the networks they contract to broadcast their events don’t care enough about showing the crucial matches live, why should we?

again his voice is very casual, however he includes his readers by using the word we. Like I said at the beginning, I have started to enjoy reading blogs for the very reason of Sean’s writing style. I like to feel a part of the community that he is writing about even if I don’t know very much about it. A non tennis fan reading his post would feel outraged for NBC’s lack of live coverage, because they can relate it to another event they have tried to watch before, but more importantly because Sean is writing about his feelings an emotions and who he is, an everyday person like me.