Rating the Reviews

So you want to be a tennis player.

The first thing you need to do is find the right racket for you. Like a pair of gloves or an old pair of jeans, when you find the right racket it just fits. It feels right. It swings as naturally as a part of your arm. The stick you choose will define your game and you can't take that decision lightly. But how do you choose one piece of equipment over 100s of others?

Although demoing a racket is always helpful, most players will read at least one or two reviews before making up their mind. Tennis.com does a great job of providing racket-shoppers with all the information they'll need.

The site has an entire "Gear" section easily found on the navigation bar, but what's better is the multimedia content you'll find with a few easy clicks.

In the racket section, for example, site-users will have a number of options. They can read the basic racket info, skim the specs for unique needs (ie. a bigger head size or a lighter frame), read the professional review or sneak a peak at a few photos. The copy is written in an easy-to-understand language, but you'll want a bit of basic tennis knowledge to fully grasp the reviewers' opinions.

The most surprising aspect of the site is its integration of video reviews alongside the text. Now, the videos are not award-wining pieces by any means (really, it's a bald man spewing a quick summary of the information you'll find on the racket's page) but it's a nice element to add for people who want even more insight before selecting their stick.

What's the most interesting thing you'll find for each piece of gear? A list of professional players who use it. If you want to slide like Novak Djokovic or wallop the ball like Victoria Azarenka, click around and find out who's using what. You'd be surprised how many people buy gear just to be like their tennis heros.

Getting Personal: Tennis.com's "Daily Spin"

While stats, bios and match analyses makeup the bulk of tennis news, Tennis.com has one feature that brings us a bit closer to our favorite players: The Daily Spin.

From dating life to retired life, The Daily Spin provides readers with an inside look at what past and present tennis stars are up to both on and off the court. With special features like "What I learned on Twitter this Week" and a constant flow of multimedia, The Daily Spin is easily one of Tennis.com's most alluring elements.

If a player is doing something worth noting,
you'll find it on The Daily Spin

One downside to the page, however, is the lack of scheduled posts. While the Daily Spin is updated regularly, dates and times of new postings vary week to week, month to month. Really, it all comes down to what's going on in the tennis world. If players like Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams are making the news, you're likely to get a bunch of new information, but if no one is causing a stir, you might not see any new articles for over a week.

The Daily Spin's focus on players' tweets has skyrocketed over the past year as more and more big names join the social media movement. While this allows for a more personal feel to the relationship between players and fans, it also allows for players to circulate their opinions to the masses. When Andy Roddick and David Ferrer struggled to play their match at the 2011 US Open due to bubbling issues on the court's surface, Roddick was capable of tweeting about his anger (followed by youtube videos of his rant, of course...)

By connecting with the players through social media, fans get a more realistic understanding of players' emotions and opinions. Suddenly tennis stars are no longer just athletes on our t.v. screen, but living, breathing people who we can interact with and side with (or against...) in their personal conflicts.

Is this good or bad for the tennis world? I'm unsure. It might not be appropriate for fans to get involved in an issue between the ATP/WTA and a specific athlete, but it's still a good news story. We live in a social world and you can't blame Tennis.com for taking advantage of that.

Covering the U.S. Open: The Do's & Don'ts of Tennis.com

Few sports have seasons as long and demanding as tennis, so avid fans are accustomed to absorbing a lot of news. From blogs, to twitter, to the USTA official site, updates come rapid fire and in almost any form a consumer could desire. No site, however, provides an information flow as steady and all-encompassing as Tennis.com.

Tennis.com is the end-all be-all for by-the-minute knowledge on what's happening in the tennis world. Looking at the site's coverage of the U.S. Open, readers can fully understanding the effort that goes in to varied content, but might you consider it to be a little too much?

Let's take a look at what I consider the "Do's and Don'ts" of Tennis.com's U.S. Open coverage.

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DO: Provide both pre-tournament and post-tournament analysis (in a timely matter):

The U.S. Open is the fourth and final grand slam tournament of the year, providing fans with two weeks of upsets, fairy tales, and dominant performances. The key term here is "two weeks", not four. While in the past, Tennis.com has extended its articles, videos, commentary and photo galleries for far too long (did Wimbledon really have to wrap-up in a series of articles over a week's time?) its coverage of this year's Open seems to be ending in an appropriate time frame. The post-match analyses, known as "Racquet Reactions" to site users, were both posted within moments of the final points—see Stosur Stuns Serena and Nole's Super Season— allowing avid fans to get their final fix almost immediately. Furthermore, the site has already released its post-tournament "grades and awards" in a lengthy, though entertaining, compilation of praises and insults to the men's and women's competitors. It's important to have final reflections arrive quickly.

DON'T: Take an awesome feature, and kill it: 

To the stunningly creative writers of Tennis.com, I have one question: Why do you have to overdo your special features? Names like Bodo, Cronin and Tignor are well-known in tennis media for their witty remarks and imaginative vocabulary, but sometimes articles seem to go just a little too far. In the "2011 U.S. Open Awards" mentioned above, senior writer Peter Bodo gave out 15 different awards/criticisms to varying athletes, overwhelming readers with overall length and (let's be honest) a list of names many of us will never be able to pronounce. On top of it all, the feature used content from other parts of the site, including videos of Djokovic and videos of Petkovic dancing, making the page appear even more chaotic and busy. While convergence allows readers to access more content faster, there's an appropriate time and place. In this situation, let us click on "video" if we want to (but okay... it's funny).

DO: Have on-going coverage of the event in a multitude of mediums: 

Tennis.com rises above all other websites for its sheer variety of content. If you want videos, you've got them. Podcasts? You bet. Updates from both the Associated Press and Tennis.com's staff? Sure thing. The site even boasts its own special features, like "The Daily Spin" which gives an inside look on tennis stars' daily lives via twitter and other media, as well as a Live Score tracker for every tournament taking place around the world. During the U.S. Open, the best places to go were the Photo Wire for action shots of your favorite players and to the live Podcast series. For site users who wanted to be interactive, they were encouraged (via homepage advertisements) to join discussion forums or to vote on the latest poll.

DON'T: Clutter the homepage with non-tournament related extras:

During the season there are lulls in the action that keep readers entertained, so Tennis.com has become a pro at providing its users with fun extras. Do you want to learn the best technique for a kick serve? Watch this video! But during an event as crowd-drawing as the U.S. Open, don't take up space with these things. Give me more inside-access to tournament stuff I don't get from watching on television.

DO: Use the eye-catching "Drop Down" feature for big news:

There is nothing I love more than typing in Tennis.com and seeing the most important news the moment the page loads. Tennis.com has become famous for its "drop down" feature—a solid color wall that includes a picture, a headline and a link—that pushes the rest of the page downward. Instant news equals instant gratification and will keep people coming back for more, especially for someone like me who relishes in seeing huge letters which read "Wozniacki's Woes" when she gets chopped out of the French Open in the third round. 

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It's hard to cover a tournament which includes 256 athletes in the singles event alone, but Tennis.com does it better than anyone else. I'm not saying the content is perfect, but it's the widest range your'e going to find on the internet. Now let's just see how they transition into post-grand slam season.