Postcard from Paris
Postcard from Paris
Postcard from Paris
Glimpses of Roland-Garros through the lens of Portland-based photographer Jake Arvidson.
Glimpses of Roland-Garros through the lens of Portland-based photographer Jake Arvidson.
By Jake Arvidson
June 4, 2026
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The 2026 Roland-Garros Shoe Report
The 2026 Roland-Garros Shoe Report
The 2026 Roland-Garros Shoe Report
Our favorites for performance, lifestyle, and everything in between.
Our favorites for performance, lifestyle, and everything in between.
By Tim Newcomb
May 28, 2026
Pink, purple, and pastel power Paris footwear in 2026. Roland-Garros traditionally offers the most intriguing mix of colors across the four majors, with the red brick presenting a distinct backdrop for the sport’s design leaders to play on. For this year’s second major, brands have embraced pastel colors, including soft tones of purple, while dipping into boldness by way of powerful pinks. Of course, with so many footwear brands now in the tennis fray, fans can still expect some bold blue, stark red, and just about every color they want as footwear collections offer variety aplenty at the 2026 edition of the French Open.
New Balance Coco CG2
Coco Gauff
New Balance celebrates its brand’s Grey Days each May, and that has traditionally spilled into Roland-Garros for Coco Gauff’s signature sneaker, the Coco CG2. This year, the gray-heavy design features a bit of “faded black” and touches of faded pink across the outsole, giving her an unmatched look across the tournament to pair with her personalized apparel.
Yonex Power Cushion Eclipsion 5 Clay
Elena Rybakina
Yonex athletes have a range of colors to choose from when picking their Power Cushion Eclipsion 5 Clay choice, but athletes such as Elena Rybakina and Casper Ruud continue to have an extra level of personalization. Rybakina wore a “ruby red” shoe with her name added to the side. Ruud was in a “silver orange” design, also with his name, while Marketa Vondrousova was in the “pale blue” colorway.
Nike GP Challenge 1.5
Jannik Sinner & Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka has placed her focus squarely on her walk-on outfits. Her shoes, then, have taken a bit of a back seat. Her Nike GP Challenge 1.5 shoes are still personalized, though, with her “NO” logo on the tongue. Sinner played the final first-round match of the tournament in the GP Challenge 1.5, his in a light blue design matching his personalized kit. Sinner’s on-court shoes from Nike haven’t been overly interesting from a design perspective, but his trophy presentation in Rome offered one of his most intriguing footwear moments.
On The Roger Pro Fire
Iga Swiatek
Iga Swiatek is in a “bloom | black” colorway of The Roger Pro Fire, but her model is custom-made for her. The shoe features plenty of purple on the upper with pink on the tongue and accents of black, all matching her mainly purple On apparel kit.
K-Swiss K-Frame Speed Rublo
Andrey Rublev
K-Swiss is one of the leaders in special player-edition models and again gives Andrey Rublev his K-Frame Speed Rublo in a distinct model for Roland-Garros. K-Swiss went more subdued with the colorway this spring, opting for a white-based design with touches of reds and grays.
Lacoste AG-LT Ultra
DANIIL MEDVEDEV
The head-to-toe Lacoste athlete dons his AG-LT Ultra shoes in a special player-edition design featuring his gaming-inspired logo. For Roland-Garros this year, Medvedev was in a light-blue kit, with the shoes to match. It was a one-round wonder, though.
Frances Tiafoe, still without an official K-Swiss deal, is again wearing the K-Swiss Killshot 4 with a small “Big Foe” logo on the side of the upper. The blue-based shoe has white accents to match his Lululemon apparel.
Alex de Minaur anchored Wilson’s big signing class of 2026, but the Australian didn’t switch to the footwear for the Australian Open. He’s now wearing the Wilson Rush 5 franchise for the clay season, completing the final steps of his Wilson 360 deal, wearing the brand from head to toe while sporting a Wilson racquet.
Emma Raducanu, who lasted only two sets at Roland-Garros, was sporting new footwear in her first major with Uniqlo. Raducanu wore Wilson’s Intrigue footwear lineup, a women’s-specific model.
As a whole, Wilson’s colorway in play at Roland-Garros for both the men’s Rush and women’s Intrigue features a white base with a gum sole and navy accents.
IMAGE COURTESY OF WILSON
Additional On athletes, such as Ben Shelton and Joao Fonseca, are wearing The Roger Pro 3 Clay in “thistle | pink,” which is basically a mix of purple and pink.
Aryna Sabalenka not only has her custom-made Nike dress, but she’s wearing a discontinued Nike Zoom NXT sneaker, back to her favorite shoe over the past few years. The white-and-black sneaker matches her custom kit.
GETTY
Asics has continued to focus its special-edition collections on apparel for 2026, offering up exclusivity for Jasmine Paolini and Belinda Bencic, keeping the footwear on brand with the in-line colorways based in white with soft accenting.
IMAGE COURTESY OF ASICS
Mizuno went red and pink for Roland-Garros, with the men wearing fiery red and white in the Wave Enforce Tour 2 and Wave Exceed Tour 7, and the women in white and “pinkesque.”
IMAGE COURTESY OF MIZUNO
The larger New Balance collection features “pink heat” with black. This is a bold look for the New Balance players in the Fresh Foam X CT-Rally v2 and the FuelCell 996v6. Both footwear options pair with pink, white, and black apparel seen across the tournament on athletes such as Tommy Paul.
Nike took inspiration from ballet and offered a wide array of footwear colors for Roland-Garros, including a range of pinks, violets, grays, and other pastels matching dark accents.
Adidas, still a stranger to special player-edition tennis models, has embraced blue for Paris this year. The footwear largely features a white-based shoe with navy and light-blue accents.
Reilly Opelka, now wearing Sease clothing, switched back to New Balance for his footwear. He’s in the clay season “pink heat” colorway, with New Balance making him custom sneakers based on the unique requirements of the 6-foot-11 player.
Follow Tim Newcomb’s tennis gear coverage on Instagram at Felt Alley Tennis.
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Jannik Sinner Dons Custom-Made Converse Jack Purcell Sneakers in Rome
One-of-One
For Number One
One-of-One For Number One
TSS gets the lowdown from Converse on the custom-made Jack Purcells Jannik Sinner wore after winning Rome.
TSS gets the lowdown from Converse on the custom-made Jack Purcells Jannik Sinner wore after winning Rome.
By Tim Newcomb
May 19, 2026
Getty
Getty
When Converse custom-made a one-of-one pair of Jack Purcells for Jannik Sinner in the Nike/Converse Montebelluna, Italy, factory, they had no idea if Sinner would even wear the gifted shoes. He did, slipping them on for the trophy celebration after winning the Rome Masters event on May 17, showcasing the latest for tennis-inspired off-court footwear fashion.
Sinner’s handmade “First String” Jack Purcells feature the world No. 1’s signature logo, Italian flag detailing, and, of course, the iconic Jack Purcell “smile” that adorns the front of the toe. The white shoes include a “Made in Italy” tag on the inside and feature the green and red of the Italian flag—the triple impact of Sinner’s home country, where the tournament was held, and where the shoes were crafted—on the heels, with the left shoe featuring a vertical green stripe with his logo embedded within and the right shoe having a red stripe with the same logo treatment.
Alex Restivo, Converse’s product director of special projects, says that every detail is important in a one-of-one creation, starting with the silhouette. “Jack Purcell was known for his grace, balance, and quiet confidence,” Restivo says. “We saw a natural connection to who Jannik is, on and off the court, and that made this the right shoe for him.”
The made-in-Italy construction was nonnegotiable. “Italy sets the standard for craft, and we have an amazing team and factory in Montebelluna,” Restivo says. “We wanted this shoe to feel like it belonged to Jannik and to that moment of him winning the Italian Open.”
The Jack Purcell is the oldest signature tennis shoe, originally crafted when Canadian badminton player Jack Purcell and the B.F. Goodrich Company of Canada partnered in 1935. The shoe quickly made its way to tennis, and Stan Smith once told me that in the 1960s he remembers players were wearing either Converse or Jack Purcells. They became one and the same as Converse acquired the rubber company’s athletic shoe line in the 1970s. The Jack Purcell eventually transitioned into a lifestyle sneaker, and after Nike acquired Converse in 2003, they introduced a variety of styles over the years.
The signature style mark on the Jack Purcell has always been the “smile,” an indention in the toe’s rubber guard mimicking the curve of a smile.
Restivo says the First String banner, which Converse recently unveiled via the Chuck Taylor, features a Vibram outsole, a Nike Air sockliner, and improved cushioning. “The Jack Purcell is one of the most important silhouettes in our archive,” Restivo says, “and Jannik wearing it at the Italian Open felt like the right moment to show the world that this shoe is back.”
Follow Tim Newcomb’s tennis gear coverage on Instagram at Felt Alley Tennis.
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State of Play
State of Play
State of Play
Torben Ulrich blurred the lines between practice, play, and art.
Torben Ulrich blurred the lines between practice, play, and art.
By Simon Hegelund
Originally Featured Volume 3 of OPEN Tennis — BUY
State of Play
Torben Ulrich blurred the lines between practice, play, and art.
By Simon Hegelund
Originally Featured Volume 3 of OPEN Tennis — BUY
Untitled, print. // Torben Ulrich.
Untitled, print. // Torben Ulrich.
“Was I then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?” Torben Ulrich responded when asked to reflect on a butterfly that had fluttered by him during a tennis match against John Newcombe at Forest Hills in 1968. Continuing along the Taoist principles of Chuang-Tzu, when asked about his age and chances of winning, Ulrich said: “How old is old? What is age? What is winning?”
Perhaps our first—and only—true tennis philosopher, Ulrich had little interest in results or absolutes. He sought instead to expose the false binaries of existence: winning or losing, artist or athlete, mind or body, sport or art, East or West. Through a lifetime of peaceful rebellion, he resisted convention in every form—through his tennis, his painting, his poetry, his jazz, and his devotion to inquiry itself.
As a tennis coach, I’ve spent much of my life studying not just technique but temperament—the psychology of performance, the philosophy of play. I’m always drawn to thinkers who blur the line between practice and art, who treat movement as a kind of meditation. Maybe that’s why Torben Ulrich has always felt like a quiet mentor to me, even from afar.
***
I was 10 when I first saw a black-and-white photograph of a long-haired, hippie-looking tennis player in my local tennis shop in Copenhagen. Another decade passed before that same guru-like figure flickered across my battered college MacBook screen in Some Kind of Monster, the Metallica documentary. There he appeared as the band’s fiercest critic, telling his son Lars, the drummer, what he thought of their album: “I think you can delete that.” He’s also a musician? I remember thinking. That discovery gave Torben Ulrich a rent-free studio in my mind—and the more I learned, the more I recognized traces of myself, or perhaps my ideal self, in him: as a human, a player, a coach.
Danish filmmaker and close friend Jørgen Leth once called Ulrich “the playful human.” Studying his life, it’s clear that the red thread running through his performances, his art, and his relationships is a philosophy of play. His way of moving through the world—dissolving dichotomies, resisting labels—was marked by a distinctly human sensitivity: play as a way of living, grounded in process.
Ulrich’s first confrontation with the cruelty of categorization came as a teenager in occupied Copenhagen. His mother was partly Jewish, and when the Nazis arrived, he fled toward Sweden in a fishing boat. Discovered and fired upon, he was captured and sent to a Danish concentration camp. “I wasn’t enough of a Jew for them,” he later said, “so I was released after two weeks.” Historians now suggest that his release was likely thanks to the Danish government’s quiet defiance—the same collective act of empathy that saw thousands of Danes claim to be Jews, helping the country largely evade the genocide that swept through Europe.
***
From the 1940s through the late 1970s, Ulrich lived the nomadic rhythm of the tennis circuit. The left-hander competed in 102 Davis Cup matches for Denmark (the last at 48), reached the fourth round of the US Open four times, and won a senior Wimbledon title. On court he was smooth and unpredictable, moving with a blend of elegance and explosiveness. His game was equal parts curiosity and intuition—experimental, musical, inspired. His tall, wiry frame resembled Pancho Gonzales, as did his aesthetic flair and rhythmic timing, but the improvisational spirit was his own. Today one might find echoes of him in Dustin Brown’s free-form shotmaking, Federer’s grace, musicality, and economy of movement, or Monfils’ playfulness and embodied joy. In musical terms—the language he loved most—Ulrich played less like a rehearsed symphony and more like a spontaneous jazz solo in search of its own melody. “I couldn’t find my song today,” he once said after a loss.
Tennis was only one of his instruments. Ulrich was among the most singular voices in Danish culture across the 20th and 21st centuries: a poet, jazz musician (and jazz-club owner), filmmaker, painter, journalist, and student of Buddhism. His work—whatever the medium—was rooted in process, in a wide-ranging inquiry into movement through the lenses of athletics, art, and philosophy. He was always in conversation with the ball: rallying with it on court, against a wall in his experimental films, in his ink traces across paper, and in the rhythms of his writing and jazz improvisations.
As a young man, Ulrich immersed himself in the post-Freudian thinkers and mystics: Krishnamurti, D.T. Suzuki, Henry Miller, and Søren Kierkegaard. These influences deepened his struggle with dualism. In a 2004 interview, reflecting on that period, he said: “I began rejecting this chauvinistic way of thinking…. I saw firsthand how this mentality was deeply flawed—either we’re Jewish, or we’re not Jewish, and suddenly we’re Jewish enough…all that shit. I tried working with this on a daily basis, to see if I could find other ways of looking at things, to reach beyond the dualistic thought process.” He became acutely aware of how institutions create boxes and conditions—teams and parties, winners and losers, blue and red. The ball is in or out, and yet, Ulrich sensed something alive in the space between.
From that awareness, his philosophy of play emerged. He sought to understand the world through presence and process, to dissolve false dichotomies by reframing experience itself. In tennis, the essence was not to win or lose, but to rally and exchange. Not to control, but to release control. “If I am in my groove,” he said after a match, “the ball will take care of itself.”
Among Ulrich’s many works, one captures his philosophy of play with particular clarity: La Balle au Mur (1989), his collaboration with French filmmaker and fellow tennis player Gil de Kermadec. In the film, Ulrich rallies not across a net but against the city itself—garbage cans, buses, brick walls scattered throughout Paris. Stroke by stroke, the act becomes a meditation on rhythm and breath: process as art, repetition without goal.
For Ulrich, the wall was a philosophical partner—at once resistance and reflection, limit and echo. Each ball’s return was time itself returning: always the same, always different. The impossibility of pure repetition; the inevitability of change through practice. “You can’t step in the same river twice,” Heraclitus said. Ulrich lived that aphorism.
He was drawn to Kierkegaard’s notion of bevæget rolighed, “moved calmness,” a paradox of motion within stillness. It describes a state of dynamic serenity, an awareness alive yet ungrasping, akin to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s flow, Lao Tzu’s wu wei, or what athletes call being “in the zone.” Every player has felt that effortless alignment. To Kierkegaard, letting go of attachment to outcome is what releases inner anxiety; to Ulrich, that release was both practice and art. He sought to embody moved calmness on and off the court.
Peak Ulrich: Torben competes at Wimbledon, 1970. // Getty
Peak Ulrich: Torben competes at Wimbledon, 1970. // Getty
The principle of moved calmness—of process over outcome—runs through everything Ulrich touched. In his visual art, play became both method and subject. He used tennis balls, skipping ropes, and fragments of racquet frames to create traces, imprints, gestures. His works, which he called “examplings of play,” captured the fleeting choreography of motion—abstract expressionism meeting Zen calligraphy, ink on rice paper.
Jazz, too, was his practice ground. Its improvisation mirrored his belief in process, discovery, and dialogue. Music, for Ulrich, was not a performance but a conversation, a space for listening as much as playing. Across all his disciplines—tennis, art, jazz, Buddhism—he pursued the same inquiry: how to dissolve boundaries and live within the space between them.
Even at the height of his career, he cared little for the final score. “To me,” he said, “the competition part of it, the score, was never of such importance. All of this was more about being open to a larger adventure—to what can happen, what you can learn.” For a professional athlete, such thinking sounds almost heretical, but Ulrich was not rejecting competition; he was transcending it. He sought the moment when a player moves beyond themselves, where play becomes creation. He called it “creative vision,” the ability to sense situations before they unfold. John McEnroe, he noted, possessed it: that capacity to shape rhythm, space, and surprise, not to dominate, but to compose.
***
Maybe I’ve been apprenticing under Ulrich all along. Over the past decade, I’ve shaped my own philosophy of play—play as an antidote to hustle culture, a quiet rebellion against efficiency. Play as release, as moving meditation, as the return of the inner child. That’s when tennis becomes spiritual for me.
Ulrich’s home court in Hellerup—designed by architect Arne Jacobsen—was his sanctuary. He practiced there late at night, describing it as a “cathedral with sacred dimensions.” I feel the same about Court Two at Virum-Sorgenfri Tennisklub, a sunken red clay court in my hometown, just 15 minutes from Ulrich’s cathedral. Some nights, when the air cools and the floodlights hum, I could sense that same stillness.
Looking back, my most vivid memories as a competitor are not the matches I won, but those I lost. In those moments of loss, I played freely, fully—untethered to outcome, alive to exchange. I went toe to toe with players who should have beaten me soundly, and felt my spirit expand with every rally. Conversely, the matches I won easily often left me hollow, detached, executing from habit rather than curiosity. “What is winning?” Ulrich asks. The egoless game reaches far beyond the ego game.
The Western fixation on victory, on defeating rather than discovering, has little to do with becoming a better player. I talk to my students about this paradox often. Winning feels good; it can build confidence. But it also deceives. It tricks us into believing we did the right thing, that we succeeded, when perhaps we merely survived. As Roger Federer reminded Dartmouth graduates in his 2024 commencement speech, he lost 46 percent of all the points he ever played.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be misled by the perfectly painted lines or the strangely layered scoring system. I ask my players to loosen their grip on those boundaries; they rarely serve growth. Be critical, I tell them, but not judgmental. Seek process over perfection. Curiosity over control. Success and failure, I remind them, are not opposites—they are collaborators.
Modern life runs on binaries. Most of our conflicts—political, cultural, personal—arise from the illusion that truth must choose sides. We inherit these grids of opposition and live within their tension. The tennis court, too, is built on symmetry and division: in and out, winner and loser, net and line. It is both a playground and a diagram of the world.
Ulrich’s answer was to play within the lines without being defined by them. His play was a quiet rebellion, a reminder that freedom is not the absence of boundaries but the art of moving gracefully inside them. I try to live and teach in that spirit. To see beyond the score. To allow a rally to mean more than a point. To find joy in the shot, even if it sails out. Control, after all, was never the point. The letting go was.
Untitled, ink on rice paper. // Torben Ulrich
Untitled, ink on rice paper. // Torben Ulrich
***
Plato’s Laches ends where it begins: with questions. The dialogue never defines courage, and that ambiguity is the lesson. Wisdom, like play, resists conclusion. Its purpose is not to close the circle but to keep it turning. Ulrich’s philosophy lives there: in the rally that never ends, the rhythm that renews itself through inquiry.
Sometimes I think of him, still, hitting against that Parisian wall, the ball returning again and again, time folding back on itself. I imagine the sound echoing through the alleys: soft, rhythmic, unhurried. Each stroke a question, each rebound an answer that never quite resolves.
Perhaps that is the truest form of play: not mastery, but motion. Not the victory, but the vibration between effort and ease. In that space, Ulrich found his calm movement, his moved calmness. And in the echo, I find my own.
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Asics Reissues the Gel-Resolution 5
2000s Style: Asics Taps the Archive with the Gel-Resolution 5
2000s Style: Asics Reissues the Gel-Resolution 5
By TSS
May 8, 2026
Images courtesy of Asics.
Images courtesy of Asics.
Originally released in 2013, the new Asics Gel-Resolution 5 is the Japanese shoemaker’s first stab at a hybrid retro performance tennis lifestyle shoe. With similar releases of running models like the Kanyano-14, the brand has pioneered the 2000s-style archival runner aesthetic that has dominated runways and the streets recently. Now, Asics has applied that formula to the Gel-Resolution 5 with this throwback from their’ tennis archive.
This latest Gel-Resolution 5 does come with a few new features and tweaks to the original, though. The prominent TPU heel cage unit is preserved from the OG version, while a new FF Blast Plus cushioning system has been added to the midsole for added comfort. One of the more interesting releases of the year, the Gel-Resolution 5 comes in two color-ways: the subtly vibrant “storm cloud” and sepia and a more neutral “cream and clay grey”.
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Q&A: Marta Kostyuk
Q&A: Marta Kostyuk
Q&A: Marta Kostyuk
“People who never experienced war can never comprehend what it is.”
“People who never experienced war can never comprehend what it is.”
By Klaus Bellstedt
Photography by David Bartholow
May 6, 2026
Q&A: Marta Kostyuk
“People who never experienced war can never comprehend what it is.”
By Klaus Bellstedt
Photography by David Bartholow
May 6, 2027
Two days after winning the biggest title of her career at the Madrid Open, Marta Kostyuk sits in a meeting room of a luxury hotel in Rome with a calmness that almost contradicts the magnitude of her breakthrough. The 23‑year‑old Ukrainian has always been more than a tennis player—a voice for her country, a sharp observer of life on tour, and someone who insists on authenticity in everything she does. In this conversation, she reflects on Madrid, the emotional weight of representing Ukraine, the strange loneliness of the WTA circuit, and the value she places on long‑term, meaningful partnerships.
You just won the Madrid Masters, the biggest title of your career. In a moment like that, what goes through your mind beyond the tennis itself?
I tried to live through these emotions as much as possible the past two days, but I was very surprised that on the day of the match I wasn’t nervous at all. Usually I’m pretty match‑nervous, but I wasn’t anxious. My biggest goal was to enjoy the moment. I had some struggles physically prior to the match, so I was more scared of the physical aspect. But when I stepped on court and realized I felt good, that freed me. Winning it was just a bonus.
Was there a moment during the week when you thought, “I can actually win this”?
The first glimpse was when I beat Caty McNally and she told me at the net, “You can seriously win this thing.” It crossed my mind for a second. From the quarterfinals on, I started thinking about it more.
Any specific moments that stand out from that run?
I was super nervous before the quarterfinal because it felt like a turning point. After that it was smoother. Before the final I tried not to think about it too much—I had a day off, I was in pain, and I needed to switch my mind off.
What about the final itself—when did it feel real?
When I started the match. I started really well and thought, “Okay, I feel good today, I can do it.” And then when I was serving for the match at 6–5, I was like, “Wow, this is really happening.”
Were you afraid in that moment?
No, I don’t think so. You can see with the way I played—I was going in, coming to the net. I wasn’t afraid. I tried not to think too much that it’s a final. It’s still another match.
You’re competing at the highest level while representing Ukraine at a very difficult time. What does that responsibility feel like today?
I felt that responsibility from 2014, when we had the big revolution in Kyiv. I was attending it almost weekly and volunteering. My family is very nationalistic in the best possible way, so I’ve had that responsibility since then. When it turned into full‑scale war in 2022, it was a different role because I was older. The responsibility didn’t go away. I focus on what messages I want to bring out there, share the pain of people, my pain. People who never experienced war can never comprehend what it is, but I’m doing my best to bring awareness.
Does carrying that weight help you mentally on court?
I want to think that way because I definitely changed. Stressful moments trigger you, and there’s a lot of room to improve as a human. I learned how to navigate it. But great suffering comes with it. My goal is to have as much balance as I can. At some point I felt that if I wasn’t anxious about the war, I would betray my family. But it interfered with my daily life. I had to change. Last year I decided I’m not going to have news notifications. You cannot expose yourself to that all the time when you’re not in it.
Tennis can be lonely. What keeps you grounded during long stretches on tour?
Generally on tour it’s pretty lonely, especially for me on the WTA side. The most lonely I feel is usually the Asian swing because everyone is tired, and I never go there with my husband or my dogs. But I think it’s just the nature of the sport. If Katie Boulter or Eva Lys or Gaby Ruse isn’t at a tournament, I feel lonely even if there are hundreds of people. They’re my colleagues, but from a human perspective, it’s lonely.
How do you experience friendships on tour?
I like steady, long, healthy relationships. With Eva, I’m the closest—I can tell her anything. She once told me, “I’m jealous you got that contract, but I’m happy for you.” That honesty is important. A lot of people say bad things behind your back and then smile at you. When you get injured, you see who remembers you. Not a lot of people reached out to me when I was injured. It’s fine—but it’s the reality.
Does success make trusting people harder?
No. I’m very trustful. I usually over‑trust and end up with a broken heart, but that’s fine. I want to put attention on things that matter—friendship, relationships. I’m sensitive, so I see when people have other intentions. But I love being open with people. I would rather have too many opportunities with people than miss a big one.
With all the travel and hotel life, what does “home” mean to you right now?
My husband joked on the plane from Madrid: The whole planet is our home. You try to create home wherever you are—a little corner next to your bed, routines, rituals. I’m lucky I travel with my husband and my dogs. But sometimes you just want your own bed, your kitchen, your food. And hotels matter. In Rouen, my husband had to sleep on a mattress on the floor. Two tournaments in a row I didn’t have a bathtub—and I love taking baths. It’s my space to relax.
How do you see your identity beyond tennis?
I’m very spontaneous. I can decide something and go somewhere. I don’t like to plan. I’m very forgiving and easygoing. I can laugh at myself. And food is a big part of my identity—I love to cook, I love to taste food. It’s one of the biggest joys of my life.
What makes a partnership meaningful to you at this stage of your career?
I always want a long‑term strategy for why I have certain partnerships. You can do something for money, but if you work with someone you don’t want to work with long-term, it’s not worth it. Quality is more important than quantity. With Wilson and now also with my new partner Duravit, I hope it’s long‑term, quality relationships. I want people who work with me to be happy with who they’re represented by. I want to pay attention to what actions I take, what I can do better, how I can present them better. The world is becoming more digital and distant—for me, relationships are the most important part of any partnership.
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The Noise and the Signal
The Noise and the Signal
The Noise and the Signal
Touching the tennis divine with Julius Gavin.
Touching the tennis divine with Julius Gavin.
By Jackson Frons
Photography by Molly Cranna
Originally Featured Volume 2 of OPEN Tennis — BUY
The Noise and the Signal
Touching the tennis divine with Julius Gavin.
By Jackson Frons
Photography by Molly CrannaFeatured in Volume 2 of OPEN Tennis — BUY
We might be entering the golden age of the tennis influencer. Perhaps the delayed result of COVID, Challengers, or divine intervention, a new generation of young indtependent creators are riding the wave (or perhaps inflating the bubble) of the tennis boom and posting their way to relative notoriety on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Legit and aspiring professionals like Karue Sell and Felix Mischker chronicle their toils on the Challengers and Futures circuits. Dylan Gee, of Tennis with Dylan, and Ashley Neaves, The Tennis Mentor, provide hyper-sincere bite-size tactical and technical coaching advice. On his eponymous YouTube channel, Winston Du posts recreational match plays highlighting a recurring cast of characters across the Southern California tennis landscape. The Tennis Nerd gives deep dives into the gear used by the pros. Winners Only Tennis and Baseline Conversation narrate their feel-good tennis journeys as they go from green adult tennis novices to full-blown tennis nuts. Coach Conor Casey has even dabbled in the realm of tennis comedy.
Across the surface-level diversity of the content these creators produce is something of a developing house style. Drone shots of prime destinations. Tournament B-roll soundtracked by “Chill Hip-Hop Beats to Study to”-type music. Aw-shucks smiles to the camera. Tepid inspirational platitudes. Ad reads for Toroline, Functional Tennis, and any product made by Diadem. They, of course, all collaborate with each other, too.
It’s a formula that has drawn the attention of some of the biggest tennis brands. Rising stars like Du and Gee have signed on with Solinco and Wilson, respectively, and Mischker has posted videos promoting Dunlop, the IMG Academy, and fellow tennis influencer Patrick Mouratoglou’s Ultimate Tennis Showdown, where he filmed an exhibition match against Lorenzo Musetti.
Despite the clear marketability of this content style, I have to say it’s all a bit bland. Everyone seems to be trying their best to be nice, positive, and normal. It’s sanitized and slick. These guys (and they are mostly guys) might be content creators, but they aren’t posters. And while some, like Sell, are veterans of our sport’s highest levels, none of them are veterans of forum flame wars. They use the internet to promote their brands, but their brains haven’t been warped by it.
Then there’s @tennis.god, a coaching creator on the come up with nearly 60,000 followers on Instagram, a notable count in the still relatively niche tennis content scene. He also has a simple, striking message that has proved quite divisive.
In one particularly emblematic reel, Julius Gavin, as he’s also known, stands dressed in all black. His Afro is neatly coiffed. A key-chain lanyard dangles from his pocket. He wields a racquet like a boardroom laser pointer.
“Is it possible to become a professional tennis player as an adult? Of course. It’s not even a question.”
It’s claims like this that have led some to think Gavin is a tennis messiah and for others to question his sanity.
In the video, and its caption that I’ve reproduced below, Gavin continues:
“If you join the military they give you a list of physical requirements to meet. They tell you EXACTLY what to do. They don’t care how old you are. They only care if you can DO IT. We don’t have that for tennis because no one’s bothered to make one—yet we have people MINDLESSLY telling you what can or can’t be done and this has been DONE BEFORE…. Tennis FITNESS is the hard part about going pro. Tennis SKILLS can be mastered in one to three months. There are only seven main strokes in tennis, and I have a video for all of them on my profile. Footwork is literally just a map, and I have a course on my profile teaching it as well. I’ve written an entire book on tennis strategy telling you everything that can possibly happen in any singles or doubles point. Tennis is not a secret society. Tennis is not a never-ending journey. These are limiting beliefs keeping you stuck in a maze when there’s a clear exit.”
On a bright October day, I met Julius Gavin at the private court in Bel-Air where he was four hours into a six-hour “private seminar” (basically a very long tennis lesson that costs $1,000). However, I wasn’t greeted by boisterous claims and big promises. I just heard the rhythmic thwack of his student’s forehands.
Gavin drove all the way from Virginia to be here after his client Sally found him on Instagram. Tomorrow he’d also be working with her son Alastair, a student at the posh John Thomas Dye elementary school. The two normally practiced at the Riviera, one of the premier clubs in Los Angeles.
Along the court were three columns of cones. More than 1,000 Penn balls, each bisected with a hand-drawn orange marker stripe, were scattered around. Hundreds more waited in a zipped black duffel bag. Three tripods mounted with Android phones recorded the action.
Gavin, who’s 25, short, and a touch pudgy, stood a few feet from the net, on the same side as Sally, who bounded from cone to cone, moving laterally first, then up and back between the rows. After each flurry of shots, he punctuated the moment with a coaching koan.
“I want to condition you so every forehand feels vibrant…. Everything starts with the heel…. Slap it open contact angle.”
Besides that last somewhat baffling piece of advice, the lesson was better than I’d expected it to be. Sally’s hitting improved as Gavin’s pointers produced a cleaner, more technically sound swing. He was also a gentle, relentlessly positive presence. And, perhaps most important, she seemed to be having a great time despite being into her fifth hour of tennis.
After many more forehands, some “slapped open contact angle,” others not, Sally stopped to take a water break. As she sipped, Julius gazed contemplatively at the dusty canyonside dotted with scrub brush.
“So, John,” he said. “Do you have any questions?”
I had so many questions. Why did he drive across the country? How did the understated guy I was on the court with turn into a self-promotional online tennis deity? Was it an act? Was he grifting? Or was it something more complex? Also, why hadn’t he bothered to learn my name? It’s Jackson.
I saved most of that for later. We had all afternoon and evening, and I also planned to stop by some of Gavin’s other “seminars” as his calendar filled out in the coming days.
As for the choice not to fly, he told me that was simple. Gear.
The balls, the filming equipment, his stacks of racquets—his own Babolats and demos for students to try—took up a lot of space. He even packed the stringing machine on which he cooks up experimental setups like “the high-tension perimeter,” which, like the name indicates, involves stringing the outer strings at a higher tension to increase power.
Like much of Gavin’s teaching, the “high-tension perimeter” flies in the face of tennis orthodoxy.
Both in videos and during the lessons I observed, Gavin preached against high net clearance and reliance on “percentage tennis,” citing how his college teammates crushed the ball “no more than a foot over the net.”
While I can’t speak to exact net clearance of the 2019 Norfolk State Spartans, I can say that this definitively contradicts my own experience watching (and playing) tennis at a decently high level. This inaccuracy is also borne out in data from the ATP Tour, which shows that even players with notoriously flatter ball flights still average around two feet of clearance.
Then there’s Gavin’s doubles advice. He proposes that players should serve wide “at least 90 percent of the time” to maximize poaching opportunities. In reality, at both the collegiate and professional level, the standard play is to poach on serves down the tee, as the lack of angle makes hitting down the line behind the net player more difficult.
There are also many instances of internal incoherence in Gavin’s tennis philosophy. In one video, he claims the backhand has a single contact point. In another, he demonstrates a multitude of backhand contact points, arranging them like hands on a clock.
Julius was also adamant to me in our time together that “tennis is the last sport that is anything like chess.”
Paradoxically, the cover of Gavin’s book The Complete Map of Tennis Strategy: How to Win Every Match Against Any Player, which retails on Amazon for $64.99, features chess pieces superimposed on a tennis court.
Factuality aside, tennis.god makes amazing content. I love the confusion, curiosity, and titillation that envelop me when I watch his videos. In a scroll full of stale meme formats and AI slop, he is interesting, flawed, and original.
Yes, it seems like he might, at any moment, proposition the viewer to join an MLM or purchase a ShamWow. And yes, I’m “triggered” at the notion that anyone could become a pro within a year, but when so much tennis content induces only an eye roll or a shrug, at least engaging with Gavin makes you feel something.
It’s a sentiment echoed by podcaster and friend of the magazine Craig Shapiro, a man also in possession of one of the larger personalities in the tennis-media-sphere.
About Gavin’s rise, he said, “There’s an absolute lack of charisma amongst the actual coaches that are giving salient, interesting information. They’re corny.” As for tennis.god himself, Shapiro has “taken great enjoyment in his insanity.”
However, for many other members of the class of coaches, pros, former elite players, and “experts” to which Shapiro and I nominally belong, the feeling most often evoked by Gavin is rage.
On the video referenced above, top 300 ATP professional Cannon Kingsley commented, “What do you consider mastering a tennis skill? Can u learn how to serve 125mph and hit every corner of the box with ease in the span of playing tennis for 1-3 months? I don’t think any player has truly mastered any skill there’s always room to improve your game. It would be extremely arrogant of me to say I’ve mastered anything in tennis. And then for you to say that you’ve mastered all of the tennis skills is something a little bit past arrogance. IMHO.”
Tennis YouTuber and top 200 ATP doubles player Simon Freund also weighed in with a remarkably I’m Not Mad take: “Wouldn’t it be the best proof of concept if you went pro and got an ATP point? I’d watch that journey for sure 🔥”
On a different post, Mischa Zverev, the elder brother of Alexander Zverev, and himself formerly the 25th best player in the world, sounded off more tactfully: “#1 backhand coach in the world…bold ish statement.”
Gavin is well aware of his haters, and he isn’t shy about responding to their comments with full-blown essays. To one commenter who chastened Gavin for giving people “false hope,” tennis.god replied: “Are you afraid to write a book that’ll change the entire sport forever and build a tennis community? Please. We all know you’re on my page because you care about me way too much and feel your authority being challenged as I literally talk about in the video. I couldn’t give two fucks about what you do on your page. You’re not a hero saving or bettering the sport. You’re jealous I’m getting spotlight.”
To another, asking, “Serious question have you ever played or coached top 100 ATP/WTA tennis? I’ll even go as far as asking have you coached top 200 ITF juniors?”
Gavin rebutted: “Just say you’re a hitting partner bro 😂😂 if I had a dollar for all of the ‘high performance’ or ‘tour coaches’ that can’t even teach the basics, I’d be a millionaire. That’s what I focus on teaching. Most of the ‘high level coaching’ I’ve seen is overyapping during rallies and practice sessions. 99% of players are not pros. They’re struggling to even get the basics down.”
While these responses are definitely a bit aggressive, Gavin’s life in tennis has been one dotted with rejection and exclusion.
He has coached at clubs—both in Norfolk and at the Biltmore in Miami—but his methods drew criticism from more classically trained tennis directors. His last quest for a club job ended with the head pro saying, “I’d give this interview a D+.”
Even Gavin’s earliest lessons were less than traditional. Unable, or unwilling, to find people to hit with in his community, he turned to his tennis-novice friends.
“If I couldn’t find players,” he told me, “I’d build them.”
By the time he started teaching in a more professional capacity, Gavin said, he “didn’t have the preconception that tennis needed to be learned slowly. [I] had this pressure to teach people quickly so [I] wouldn’t be scamming them.”
In a self-aware turn, he added, “But now that’s what people think of me as anyway.”
Julius asked me about my own tennis background as we schlepped his gear out to his Honda after the “seminar.” I gave a noncommittal answer. We’d be hitting the court later, after I interviewed him, and I wanted Gavin to go in with as blank a slate as possible.
Given the name mix-up, I was confident he hadn’t looked me up, which was a good thing, since I have more in common with the critics in his comments than the fans, who tend to mostly be adult recreational players.
I used to be a pretty good junior (around 120th in the country), and I had an okay college career, too. I also still compete now and then at a decently high level. As recently as 2023 I was a UTR 10, I still get out there occasionally in USTA 5.0 leagues, and I also currently help coach a college team.
Like many good tennis players, I didn’t end up where I am by accident. I’ve had the privilege to work with notable coaches, and I grew up in Southern California, surrounded by high-level players. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say, like Gavin does, that talent has no bearing on one’s tennis success (I’d certainly be much worse if I was a foot shorter), I do think the game of growing champions is at least somewhat financially rigged. To that end, unlike the guys (who are much better than me) in his comments, I’m less quick to dismiss Julius Gavin because he doesn’t sound like a normal tennis coach and because he never was that great of a player himself.
Gavin was born and raised in Norfolk, Va., near the naval station where his father served. A career enlisted man, he met Gavin’s mother while deployed in the Philippines. As a tennis parent, he was “not amazing, to say the least.”
Julius, like many young tennis players, wanted to be a professional, but he didn’t have the coaching, resources, or environment necessary to reach the highest levels.
He competed in junior tournaments with mixed results. Gavin never cracked the top 1,000 in the nation for his grade, and, after walking on at his hometown school, Norfolk State, he played on the team for only a semester, logging just a single match appearance. His highest available Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) is a 7.20, or roughly the level of a solid NTRP 4.5, which he achieved on Feb. 18, 2019.
While it’s been quite a few years since Gavin trekked to tennis tournaments with his dad, when he opened up to me on a bench in Encino’s Balboa Park the wounds still felt fresh.
Gavin told me that his father “publicly chastised [him] at every single tournament…. He would gesture…make these big eyes.”
About the behavior, Gavin was conflicted.
“You hate that your dad is mad at you and you want to make him proud, so you kind of want him to be there, but you don’t want him to be a fucking asshole.”
Julius laughed and shook his head.
“Oh shit, man.”
The story reminded him of an anecdote he’d seen a mindset speaker recount in a video. It was about “this guy who killed his wife and two daughters.”
It was a disturbing story that related to our conversation, I guess, because of the compliance inherent to children.
“Wow,” I said.
“So I was getting humiliated all the time by my own dad.” We were back on track. “And he would complain about me to other parents. And he would make me feel embarrassed. He would always tell me that everyone is your competition and nobody is your friend. And I was not only disconnected from my own emotions, but disconnected from everyone else. And now in retrospect I wish I made more friends with people. Because making friends with people is actually one of the number-one ways to get good at tennis. All the top players, they have a bunch of hitting partners.”
Tennis is a lonely sport. A brutal singles match can drive professionals and amateurs alike to the edge of madness. For that reason, I think, the game attracts mercurial, solitary people. Artist and writers, sure, but tennis also appeals to those whose solitary obsessions circle around more commerce-oriented notions of success—CEOs, Wall Street tycoons, and, in the case of Julius Gavin, residents of some of the more lonely and reactionary corners of the internet.
In the park, a goalie coach drilled his student on the knobby grass, a high school tennis team labored through basic rallies on the cracked courts, and Julius peppered our conversation with references to the ketogenic diet (he eats a ton of liver), mindset gurus (he particularly admires former Navy SEAL David Goggins), and testosterone levels (apparently on the decline because of chemicals in tap water).
It occurred to me that Gavin’s content becomes legible not when viewed through the lens of a tennis influencer scene he doesn’t quite fit in, but in the context of terminally online young men who live by the teachings of the nexus of mindset, fitness, combat, comedy, nutrition, business, and “success” influencers who make up what many have termed the Manosphere. For those blissfully ignorant of names like Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Jordan Peterson, Grant Cardone, Andrew Tate, Theo Von, and the rest of the Joe Rogan Extended Universe, what matters is that it was in the fires of this world, and its flimsy factuality, that tennis.god was forged.
It was also the influence of these “thinkers” that sent our conversation in a cosmic direction.
Like many deities, tennis.god loves a good proclamation. While I had expected to receive many of these during our interview, it came as a surprise that much of what Julius wanted to talk about went far beyond the realm of tennis.
Gavin regaled me with his secret knowledge of the indivisible structure that dictates our perceived reality.
He said there is a “weird law” in life that truth and survival tend to juxtapose each other. Also, paradoxes unveil themselves to those who have created a proper system, and all of the most successful people are doing “esoteric things” that are not mainstream at all. It’s also true, apparently, that an intense amount of truth is hidden somewhere if:
(1) Everyone thinks it’s bullshit.
(2) The people who believe it extremely misunderstand it.
(3) It is persistent for years.
“Astrology is an example. Alchemy is an example. Isaac Newton, he was a heavy, full-time alchemist.”
These eternal laws of nature, he said, can only be perceived with meditative focus and deep contemplation—things that are made more difficult by the strictures and distraction of modern life. The noise. Julius Gavin is looking for the signal of truth in that noise.
Julius told me that human capacity is limitless. Not just on the tennis court, where things like talent, level, and negativity are mere constructions of the mind, but also in matters of health.
He told stories that sounded more like miracles. A man who fasted for 30 days “shocked the doctors” and cured himself of stage 4 cancer.
A woman who had her thyroid surgically removed grew it back through meditation alone.
It’s possible that, at this point, I was unable to conceal my suspicion, because Gavin then tacked on, “I hope that one’s true.”
I couldn’t find anything to corroborate the cancer example, but the thyroid story does seem to have a clear origin: a patient of Dr. Joe Dispenza’s named Christine. Dispenza, a “researcher of epigenetics, quantum physics, and neuroscience,” is a New Age medical practitioner with more than 3 million Instagram followers. While I can’t speak to the veracity of Christine and Dispenza’s tale, I do think it necessary to point out that Dispenza’s only doctorate is in chiropractic.
On a similar note, I can no more easily confirm or deny the hidden structure of reality as I can determine if tennis.god really is the world’s best tennis coach. What I can say with absolute factuality, though, is that there is a real esoteric force that has, to some degree or another, quite explicitly shaped not only Gavin’s life and career, but the interests, opinions, and thoughts of nearly all Americans. The Algorithm(s).
Amongst influencers, “catching the algorithm” is a common term for blowing up beyond the siloed walls of one’s normal content community. The algorithm—everyone’s own, personalized one—is also the Overton window of what one sees passively on their screens. I am hardly the first to point out that the internet, with its endless “echo chambers” and infinite wormholes, feeds people more of what they already want. This can be a way to fill your feed with tennis content or dog videos, but it can also be a means of radicalization, particularly for those who are lonely, disaffected, and (not unjustly) lacking faith in the status quo.
It was also the algorithm that first delivered Gavin’s Instagram posts to my phone and, years before, sent him down the journey that created tennis.god.
When Julius was in college, the algorithm “recommended a bunch of drop-shipping videos and a bunch of SMMA [Social Media Marketing Agency],” and he became introduced to a world of “entrepreneurs who started having a lot of success at such a young age.”
They inspired him to pursue a path that wasn’t getting an office job out of college, drudging along. It’s an impulse I can relate to. Although, unlike Gavin, my algorithmic journey didn’t lead me into the world of sales gurus and mindset.
It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that Gavin and I made it out onto the court together. We’d changed locations again, now in Studio City, where it took some cajoling for the court attendant to allow us to bring Gavin’s rolling basket out.
“It’s for journalism,” I promised her.
Julius stood on the same side of the net as me and tossed me a few forehands, a few backhands. He asked my string tension. He handed me his Pure Strike for a few shots. He took it back.
“I’m surprised,” he said. “Your game is great.”
Deciding he had little to teach me, he suggested we hit.
Despite being hobbled by a knee injury that I would come to learn was a minor medial meniscus tear, I managed to get in a few good rallies with tennis.god.
The numbers and rankings didn’t lie about his game. He’s not bad, especially off the forehand, but he’s not great, either. For the most part, Gavin did seem to be clear-eyed and relatively humble about the state of his current play. Of course, he told me that, once he has the money, he hopes to take time off to train and become a successful pro, so he can shut up the haters.
I think that might be a tall order, as I’ve found no evidence that Gavin isn’t woefully misinformed about how tennis works above the NTRP 4.5 level. I mean, for one thing, I’m pretty good, but there’s a lot about my game that can be cleaned up. I’m still nowhere near the end of learning tennis. I’m on the endless journey, probably for life.
A few days later, back at the court in Bel-Air, I watched as Gavin taught Sally a shot he calls “the whip forehand.” I know it as the “reverse forehand” or “the buggy whip,” and while it probably wouldn’t be the first technique I’d teach a player of her level, she loved it. She also raved about how, since her last “seminar,” her coach had been blown away by how hard she was hitting.
It had been a busy weekend for Gavin, too. So many followers had slid into his DMs to set up their own sessions that he extended his stay (another benefit of driving) and had traversed Los Angeles from Glendale to the Palisades. He even ended up in Fresno for a day and would soon travel to Palo Alto.
I also wasn’t the only journalist hot on tennis.god’s tail. Conservative provocateur and self-described “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh, in addition to booking a multi-hour lesson for himself, hoped to score some coverage for Gavin on Blaze Media, an outlet that, unlike this one, Julius already knew about.
As I watched Gavin work with Sally again, thought back on his lesson with her son, and re-scrolled his comments, which, in addition to the haters, are full of fans voicing support, asking for discount codes to online courses, and singing the praises of how Gavin’s methods have changed their games, I finally saw the light. I let down my guard. I allowed tennis.god into my heart.
Here’s the thing: Most tennis players never get close to becoming 4.5s, and I’ve come to realize tennis.god exists for the masses, not for me. Whether or not the finer points of his technical instruction are “correct,” it’s true that his maxims, like “the backhand finish is a bicep curl,” are easier to grasp and visualize than more abstract jargon like “pronation,” “the ATP forehand, or “the kinetic chain.”
It’s true as well that most people shouldn’t try to play like professionals. They just need the basics.
Ironically, although Gavin markets himself with concrete deliverables, his best product is more ephemeral. He sells the belief that picking up this sport doesn’t have to be that hard. It’s striking a chord because that’s the kind of attitude tennis needs and is so often sorely lacking.
As for the nitty-gritty aspects where he isn’t always spot-on, much like in a tennis match, where if you do the big things correctly—making returns and first serves, putting away your volleys, fighting for every point—you can compensate for a bad slice or a lack of raw athleticism, so too has Gavin transcended his mixed technical knowledge by tapping into a larger, invisible structure of coaching reality. Hitting a ton of balls and believing in yourself is most of the battle.
Like it or not, he also gets results.
Dani de la Fe was a student of Gavin’s back from his days at the Biltmore. This was before his Instagram infamy, but he already was confident.
As she recalls, “He was like, ‘I’m gonna tell you right now that I’m the best test coach that’s ever existed…. I’m going to totally change your game.’”
She and her husband were sold. They went in for a lesson. Then another and another. They followed Gavin from court to court around Miami after he left the club, even recommending him to other players in her circle.
“People started hitting with him,” she said, “and everybody loved him, because very quickly they saw those kinds of initial results…. He has just a good way of explaining things to a beginner.”
As for his boisterous, arguably deluded claims, that’s just part of the fun.
“It’s almost something you’d expect from, like, an older white guy. Not this young black kid…. I mean, his fucking Instagram videos, I can’t. They’re, like, too good.”
While I wouldn’t recommend Gavin’s services to a serious junior or college player, for the many adults picking up the sport late or just getting back into it since childhood, he might really be a tennis god. In California, at least, he attracted an affluent, well-connected clientele, who certainly weren’t lacking tennis coaches to choose from. The message resonates. And even if Gavin isn’t a miracle worker, taking lessons from him would undoubtedly be more fun than tracking down a random pro who also probably has no idea what they are talking about. I like the guy. He’s compelling.
Before heading back east, Julius attended a seminar at the Sheraton Gateway near LAX hosted by Marczell Klein, a success coach and hypnotist. I saw it on Gavin’s Instagram story.
Klein claims that through hypnosis he can instantly make anyone quit smoking, get rich, or do just about anything else. His social media channels include prefight pep talks to Jake Paul, sports cars, and dubious titles like “How to Hypnotize ANYONE to Do Anything (USE ETHICALLY!).”
Klein’s whole shtick seems, at minimum, to be predatory. In one of his pinned clips, captioned POV: YOU HAVE A CULT, he demonstrates the ability to make the attendees of his seminar collapse to the conference room floor with a simple tap on the shoulder and the command “sleep.”
It’s a sight reminiscent of martial-arts hoaxers who claim to have mastered the mythic “dim mak.”
Klein’s website also boasts coverage from Yahoo Finance and USA Today, and his Instagram claims he’s a “best-selling author.”
None of this is explicitly false, but it isn’t exactly true, either. Klein’s media coverage on these outlets is sponsored PR content. His “best-selling” book has yet to crack the Amazon top 150 titles in the “hypnosis” category—worldwide it sits at 1.4 millionth. Although, technically speaking, it is the best-selling title by a success hypnotist named Marczell Klein.
As I continued to doom-scroll Klein’s content, I came to another realization—it reminded me a lot of tennis.god. Klein also lives by the short-form declarative. He makes massive promises. In writing, they both employ a liberal use of CAPS LOCK to EMPHASIZE a POINT. They cite similar buzzwords, too, like limiting beliefs. Even their voices sound similar.
Discovering Klein’s apparent influence on Julius’ posting, I experienced the deflating sense of contextual awareness that a M.J. Lenderman fan gets after discovering Songs: Ohia, or a new tennis viewer taken with Grigor Dimitrov might endure after finding out about Roger Federer. The thing I thought was totally original, sui generis, wasn’t.
The weeks since Gavin’s departure from California have also been clouded by the election. While I’m not sure for whom (or if) Julius voted, he’s undeniably representative of the class of young men who appear to have been electorally essential in helping Donald Trump cruise to victory.
Like many denizens of the very right-wing Manosphere, Gavin is unspoken to by mainstream liberal society and not compelled by classic party lines like class or race. He speaks the language of contemporary American culture, a warped truth that is at once aggrieved, arrogant, and fragile. The Father (truth, authority, expertise, whatever) might be dead, but he’s still angry at Dad.
But with Gavin there is always a paradox and a complication. His reactionary bent doesn’t exist in a void. Most tennis coaches are hacks. Life in America does kind of suck.
Put into slightly different vernacular, his gripes are what many might consider woke. He was emotionally stunted by militaristic critique and longed for a more holistic, inclusive upbringing.
Yet Gavin’s solutions and inspirations turn, so often, to Special Forces Operators and Navy SEALs—programs known to break and denigrate their plebs, aiming not to turn them into esoteric free thinkers, but cold instruments of war.
He believes in a human mind so fantastically powerful it can will the body to complete BUD/S on broken legs or cure stage 4 cancer through fasting, yet so fragile that the mere presence of a parent courtside can derail a tennis match.
When having his picture taken for a profile in a chic tennis magazine, he said he felt like Homelander, the megalomaniacal superhero/supervillain from The Boys.
Perhaps I’ve studied Gavin so long the paradoxes are revealing themselves…
In the weeks following Gavin’s trip to L.A., he got called out in a flurry of posts by fellow tennis creator Amir Rahbar, who runs @thetennisvault on Instagram, which led to his content reaching Donna Vekic’s coach Sascha Bajin.
In a reel posted on Dec. 16, 2024, Bajin said, “I want to expose you because you are a con artist.” Bajin then offered a challenge: He’d fly Gavin out to this year’s Miami Open and give him two weeks to train a complete beginner of his choosing for a match against Bajin himself. Bajin was even prepared to put some money on the line, offering to post 10 times whatever sum Gavin was willing to risk.
In typical frothing fashion, Gavin immediately replied in the comments, writing, “Sounds great, let’s hop on a call and discuss if you have anyone available to meet the challenge. I’m tired of coaches narcissistically complaining about how hard they have it when it’s not about the you. It’s not about you and your pretty little feelings. It’s about players.”
However, unlike his previous dustups, this one seemed to have stung Gavin. Citing health issues, he didn’t post another coaching reel until March 7, and neither he nor Bajin has publicly mentioned the challenge since.
Lately, though, it seems Gavin has righted the ship, and he’s back to walking the way of the tennis.god, searching for the signal in the noise, guided by the secret structure of reality, dismissing doubt, and managing the knife’s edge between truth and survival.
He’s been posting quite a bit about the effects of different audio frequencies on the subconscious and claiming to have gotten beginners to hit at a college level in mere hours. At the end of April, he’ll leave the country for three months of private intensive coaching with a client in Romania, and long-term he’s thinking about an accreditation system of his own. Not like the USPTA, but something that he’d market to tennis parents to help them be better with their kids.
If he believes in it enough, I bet it might actually work.
“Here’s the thing about human beings and our interaction with reality,” he told me. “A conscious being is the only thing where perception affects causality. Like if I just drop this phone, it’s just physics. Cause and effect. Human beings, we will take real actions based off of things that aren’t real…. The effect is real, but the thing that went on in your brain is not real. That’s why mindset is so powerful. This shit is so Zen. You have to sit in silence and it comes to you.”
TENNIS. ART. CULTURE. FASHION. TRAVEL. IDEAS. — SIGN UP
Postcard from Munich
Postcard from Munich
Postcard from Munich
Photographer Christian Brecheis sends a dispatch from the BMW Open.
Photographer Christian Brecheis sends a dispatch from the BMW Open.
By Christian Brecheis
April 21, 2026
YOUR WEEK IN TENNIS — SIGN UP FOR THE SECOND SERVE NEWSLETTER
Roger That
On Launches The Roger Pro 3 and The Roger Wildcard
On Launches The Roger Pro 3 and The Roger Wildcard
By Tim Newcomb
April 21, 2026
Images courtesy of On.
Images courtesy of On.
On launched two new Fed-inspired models today: The Roger Pro 3— the third iteration of its original performance tennis shoe—and its first-ever “The Roger” silhouette featuring On’s famous CloudTec midsole.
Roger Federer first donned the Swiss company’s first signature performance shoe in 2021. Five years later, Ben Shelton now serves as the face of the on-court franchise, launching The Roger Pro 3 on April 21. The focus? Speed and agility.
For the third version, On added a layer of Helion foam in the midsole for increased responsiveness. The foam, also used in On’s running lineup, will pair with the carbon fiber Speedboard plate. The new design drops 10 grams from its predecessor with a mantra of offering speed with energy return. The outsole pattern hearkens to the original Roger Pro, ditching the herringbone for a diamond pattern. On the upper, coated engineered mesh reinforcements are meant to enhance durability and breathability.
On used Shelton’s insights to help lead the design. “It has been cool to be a part of the process and help On really build a great shoe,” Shelton told The Second Serve. “I do think that each iteration of The Roger Pro has been better than the last.”
Shelton, who was part of the prototyping and testing of the second model—he also wore the original on clay courts when he signed with the brand in 2023—says the shoe has really grown. “I think at the beginning it was a light shoe, but just not super supportive on the upper,” he said. “They have reinforced it to a point now where it looks like a premium shoe.”
The April 21 launch features a hard-court lineup of linen and lime colorway that we saw Shelton sport in Australia and a white-and-pink colorway. For the clay, expect a black-and-pink version and the Roland-Garros-ready thistle and pink. All four colorways are available for men and women.
The Roger Wildcard
As the Roger lineup branches into multiple performance models, the lifestyle cadre continues to blossom. The latest version is the most distinct yet, with The Roger Wildcard the first Roger model to feature On’s well-known CloudTec midsole. On mixed the CloudTec Phase technology—there’s no Speedboard on this model—in the midsole with an upper inspired by the original Roger Pro. Fans can find the snap-button loop covering the laces with the R. branding and layered overlays on the woven mesh upper with Roger-based detailing. The launch colorway of The Roger Wildcard features ivory and maroon for men and ivory and evergreen for women.
Images courtesy of On.
Images courtesy of On.
Follow Tim Newcomb’s tennis gear coverage on Instagram at Felt Alley Tennis.
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Strokes of Genius
TV Party
TV Party
Strokes of Genius: Jonas Wood at Gagosian, Beverly Hills
Strokes of Genius: Jonas Wood at Gagosian, Beverly Hills
By David Shaftel
Photography by TSS
April 2, 2026
Jonas Wood
Gagosian
Beverly Hills, CA
Artwork © Jonas Wood
Jonas Wood
Gagosian
Beverly Hills, CA
Artwork © Jonas Wood
Photography by TSS
Jonas Wood’s new show at Gagosian in Beverly Hills represents a significant escalation in the series of tennis court paintings he began in 2011—as well as an evolution from Four Tennis Courts, his last exhibition of tennis court studies in 2021 at Gagosian in New York. The new show features more than 20 paintings of courts the L.A.-based artist has seen on TV—his reference point is not the stands, but the comfort of his home and studio, where tennis is frequently on TV, along with basketball, another of Wood’s sporting and artistic passions.
The new works depict much deeper cuts on the tennis tour than his previous court studies, such as the Japan Open, the Porsche Grand Prix, the WTA Tour Finals in Riyadh, and the Madrid Open, to name just a few, along with his own Nintendo game system, as if to emphasize how these courts were taken in by the artist. Though no players are depicted, score lines often are, some of them notable. We see, for example, a moment in Novak Djokovic’s gold-medal match at the 2024 Paris Olympics and Victoria Mboko’s maiden tournament win, in Montreal, where she defeated Naomi Osaka in the final.
There’s also a painting of his own studio, where, as usual for Wood, space is compressed and linear perspective dispensed with—and Wimbledon is on the television. The work references Matisse’s The Red Studio, which Wood has reproduced more literally on his own “Matisse Pots” cutouts.
Wood is known for painting from his own photo collages and found images, and he often references artists who have inspired him. “For Wood, the standardized dimensions and varied color schemes of tennis courts allow the series to function as a form of serial abstraction, with each work balancing unique and repeated elements,” according to the gallery. As such, the new paintings offer a lot more visual references than just the tennis court themselves. Several reproduce the works of Roy Lichtenstein, such as Dubai With Nude With Blue Hair. Other courts are framed by subway tiles, speckled flooring, notes to self, and Wood’s signature houseplants. Wood has referred to his work as “a visual diary,” and with this set of paintings his pages are filled with tennis.
The show is up until April 25.
