Starting in 2023, this site has published a year-long series leveraging a non-tennis book as inspiration to improve our tennis lives. That effort unfolded as a monthly weekend series over the first full weekend of each month. The 12 Habits of Highly Successful Tennis Players was the theme for 2023, a concept that was clearly inspired by Steven Covey, though each month’s topics obviously didn’t follow the outline of that book because 7 does not equal 12. In 2024, the source framework was based on concepts from the Designing Your Life book by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. This year, the theme revolved around The Happiness Project, which was inspired by the book by Gretchen Rubin. All of these series leveraged those books to varying degrees as a prompt for a monthly exploration of joy, performance improvement, and satisfaction in the game.
As 2026 approached, I was confronted with the reality that I had failed to find a suitable book to continue the tradition in the coming year. While I have a selection for a non-tennis-specific book that I plan to feature in early January, that title did not cleanly fit into a 12-month cycle. Rather than trying to force it, I determined that I would be forging my own path. Consequently, 2026 will be the year of our tennis glow-up.
A glow-up is a current pop-culture slang term for a significant, positive transformation in a person’s life, often associated with dramatic improvements in appearance, style, confidence, and overall well-being. It is commonly highlighted in social media as before-and-after imagery. However, it would be an oversimplification to categorize a glow-up as merely cosmetic. Instead, it reflects internal evolution driven by self-care, improved habits, clearer priorities, and personal growth. What may look like a sudden transformation from the outside is usually the result of sustained effort, resulting in a holistic upgrade that moves someone from a less intentional version of themselves toward their best self.
Applied to tennis, a glow-up is not about slapping a band-aid on an aspect of your game, seeking quick short-term gains. Rather, it is about refining the entire foundation that shapes your engagement with the sport, both on and off the court. Preparation, mindset, expectations, training habits, recovery, sportsmanship, and community all matter. A tennis glow-up shows up as steady confidence, better decision-making under pressure, healthier relationships with competition, and a deeper sense of purpose in why you keep coming back to the court.
Our tennis glow-up will refine how you engage with the sport. It is about showing up with greater intention, sustaining improvement without burnout, and maintaining a relationship with the game that remains meaningful long after peak performance fades.
Each month in 2026, we will focus on a single glow-up focus area over the first full weekend of each month, which I define as Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Each of those weekends will be filled with three connected posts exploring that topic from different angles or aspects. Some will be philosophical. Some will be practical. Many will intersect with training habits and the social realities of recreational tennis. As always, you can probably expect a healthy dose of overthinking from time to time.
Here are the planned topics for the coming year:
- January: Purpose — clarify the real reasons tennis still matters, then build around them.
- February: Discipline — create reliable systems that hold up when motivation fades.
- March: Resilience — rebound faster from losses, setbacks, injuries, and off-days.
- April: Focus — quiet the noise, simplify decision-making, and play one point at a time.
- May: Adaptability — adjust tactics and mindset when conditions, opponents, or plans change.
- June: Connection — strengthen the relationships that make tennis sustainable and fun.
- July: Confidence — build trust through preparation, repetition, and evidence, not bravado.
- August: Creativity — expand tactical range through experimentation and controlled risk.
- September: Mastery — refine the fundamentals through deliberate repetition and precision.
- October: Reflection — turn experience into insight using notes, video, and honest self-audit.
- November: Contentment — protect joy by valuing progress and process, not only outcomes.
- December: Legacy — give back to the game through example, stewardship, and contribution.
The first glow-up focus area, purpose, begins tomorrow. Over the next three days we will take a deliberate look at why we play, how that answer changes over time, and what happens when purpose is left undefined. Everything else this year builds on that foundation, so it is the right place to start.
