Courtside Desk

by Courtside Desk

Four hours, two tie-breaks and a crowd of nine. The house final nobody was watching turned into the best tennis of the term.

by Courtside Desk

It loses more points than it wins. It is harder to teach, harder to time and worse against height. Keep it anyway.

by Courtside Desk

They are on the courts before anyone and after everyone. We asked what four decades of grass has taught them about how we play.

by Courtside Desk

We restrung six rackets to exactly the same specification and gave them back unlabelled. Only two players noticed.

by Courtside Desk

Thirty-one boys, two courts, one afternoon and a selector with a clipboard. What actually gets noticed in ninety seconds.

by Courtside Desk

School tennis is decided almost entirely by a shot nobody practises and everybody dreads.

by Courtside Desk

The same player, the same racket, three completely different games. A term of playing on whatever was free.

by Courtside Desk

Stop following the ball. A short guide to seeing what is actually happening from the side of the court.

by Courtside Desk

A coach at seven, rain until eleven, and four hours of tennis compressed into ninety minutes of daylight.