Growing the Game Archives

An Ode to Slab Courts

On May 22, 2021 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

Yesterday I lamented how my hometown systematically blocks public access to tennis courts that are ordinarily open in other municipalities. After being thwarted by the locks and chains at the middle school courts last weekend, I swung by a couple of courts that I knew would be available. As far as I know, Belair Park has the only courts in Wichita Falls that are routinely open and accessible. In fact, there are no gates at all so they can’t be closed and locked.

Learning Curves: Pickleball vs Tennis

On September 5, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

Examination of pickleball is unavoidable and inevitable in any serious consideration in growing the game of tennis. Pickleball is regarded as a competitive threat to tennis. At the same time, the explosive growth of the sport is an enticing case study for any sport wishing to replicate the same success.

Coming Full Circle with Senior Tennis

On August 30, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

Someday I will tell the story of when I quit tennis forever. Today I want to focus on a tiny part of the story of when I came back to tennis. Specifically, how I slid down the slippery slope into the NTRP system. As previously mentioned in “My Days as an NTRP Sandbagging Bastard” I never had any desire to play NTRP rated tennis.

Learn To Play: Tennis vs Pickleball

On August 10, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Tennis News

As an interesting thought exercise, I set up two web browsers side by side and pointed them at google. For the sake of technical completeness, I did this from a newly initialized virtual machine from a browser with no search history and ran the session through a VPN to ensure that the search could not be associated with my previous internet activity in any way. From this pristine state, I constructed a pair of queries: “learn to play tennis” and “learn to play pickleball.”

Marketing Tennis Tournaments: Consumer Analysis Part 2

On August 9, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

Today we are transitioning over to the side of my tennis consumer analysis that addresses the people who are engaged in tennis. Further segmentation within that market are people who are engaged in tennis in a non-playing capacity and people who play tennis. I drew a Venn diagram of these two segments acknowledging that there is some degree of overlap between those two groups.

Marketing Tennis Tournaments: Consumer Analysis

On August 8, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

I am delivering on the promise I made yesterday to spend the rest of the weekend examining what a comprehensive consumer analysis for tennis entails. The image that accompanies this post is my literal first draft of that effort. First, let’s revisit the statement that sent me down this path.

Marketing Tennis Tournaments: Putting Pen to Paper

On August 7, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

One of the most interesting aspects of the “2021 Adult Tournament Changes” published by the USTA is the claim that the new structure would make it easier to market tennis to the consumer. If this means that the USTA is actually about to start marketing tennis tournaments, this is super exciting news. As I previously observed in “Donald Dell Fires Shots Across the USTA Bow,” I cannot recall seeing an advertisement for playing tennis outside of a tennis context. Ever.

A Deeper Cut: USTA Restructuring and Player Development

On August 3, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Tennis News

This week’s episode of the TENNIS.com Podcast carried an interview with WTA player Julia Elbaba. During the opening of the episode, there was discussion between Elbaba and the podcast hosts on coping with the recent permanent closure of the USTA Player Development Center in New York. It was news to me to learn that there even was such a program at that location.

Radical Ideas for Bridging Juniors to Adult Tennis

On August 2, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

One of my favorite sayings is “When all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.” When thinking about how to retain junior players as they transition into adult tennis, tournaments are like the USTA’s hammer while leagues are the USTA’s wrench. Both are valuable tools, unless confronted with a screw.

Solving the NTRP Initialization Problem for Former Juniors

On August 1, 2020 By Teresa Merklin

Unplugged

Yesterday I expressed skepticism that the reason that junior players do not transition directly into adult tournaments is because they are confused about the structure. I believe that the real point of uncertainty is understanding how they fit within the NTRP system. That difficulty arises both when looking for an event to play as well as during the self-rating process.

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