Photographer Christian Brecheis sends a dispatch from the BMW Open.

By Christian Brecheis
April 21, 2026

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by David Bartholow

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.

SIGN UP — YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR SECOND SERVE.

SIGN UP — YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR SECOND SERVE.

by David Bartholow

Strokes of Genius

TV Party

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.

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by David Bartholow

Outside the Box

Anti-folk hero Adam Green’s reimagined tennis courts complement an adventurous Q&A with Gabriel Allen, author of Tennis Tensions: Class, Race and Gender in the Evolution of the Sport.

By Patrick J. Sauer
Artwork by Adam Green

Featured in Volume 3 of OPEN Tennis — BUY

In the back-to-back seasons of 1904 and 1905, the violence at the heart of football was so extreme, the future Great American Pastime was on the brink of existence. A whopping 37 prep and college players died of football-related injuries, causing universities like Stanford and Duke to drop their programs. Saving the pigskin found noted gridiron and mustache enthusiast Teddy Roosevelt using his presidential bully pulpit to call for a football safety quorum. The rulebook was never the same. Among the suggestions was the “forward pass,” an alteration so shocking to the game’s brutish nature The New York Times reported that “many predict the ruination of the game through the drastic reformation.”

In October 2024, Evangel Christian Academy quarterback Peyton Houston completed 53 of 68 passes for 817 yards and eight touchdowns…

In a 77–76 overtime loss, sure, but the point is, sports are evolving all the time in ways big and small. A pitch clock was added to baseball three years ago, and the game now moves at a much quicker pace, a universally loved adjustment that didn’t alter the sport one iota. Various basketball entities like the G League and the Canadian Elite League have adopted the “Elam Ending,” which turns off the game clock late in the fourth quarter and teams play to a target score set by adding eight points to the leading squad’s current point total. The Elam doesn’t guarantee a buzzer beater, but it sure beats the excessive clock-stoppage fouling that squeezes the life out of what should be the climactic final moments.

Author and tennis lifer Gabriel Allen wholeheartedly believes it’s high time his beloved sport rids itself of its colonizer roots by ditching the love-deuce-ad scoring system that separates it from every other sport on earth. His advocacy for a “tiebreaker match” is just one of the thought-provoking ideas permeating Tennis Tensions: Class, Race and Gender in the Evolution of the Sport, a book that delivers a blistering overhead smash to any number of conventional wisdoms in its tight 185 pages. Allen is a didact, but never off-putting or smug. At various points, I found myself feverishly nodding along with him that a lot of what we “know” about the history of tennis is wrong, and yes, there is a basic universal unfairness at its core. Other times, I vociferously shook my head in defense of tradition, because honestly, who gives a shit if a casual fan feels the need to post about how they can’t understand 15–30–40? Try harder, dummy.

Tennis Tensions is never dull. And while Allen may be a contrarian, it’s from his head and his heart and not a hot take. He spoke to OPEN Tennis about the sport’s “white tennis unconscious” undergirding, his dad’s bespoke grip, DIY book hustling, and how, fingers crossed, it may be the beginning of the end of tennis as we know it.

How did your life in tennis begin and evolve?

I usually say my tennis background began right around the time I first got consciousness. My dad was huge into the sport, played at the University of Kentucky and coached throughout his life. The story goes I was rallying from the baseline at age 4, but then it was 3…. The legend is growing every year, but it was a big part of my youth. I played juniors, went to the Super Nationals and various other tournaments, but by high school I’d drifted away from the USTA stuff and wasn’t playing as much. I enjoyed playing on the high school team itself, but I was burned out. During my first couple of years in college at Temple, I didn’t play at all.

What got you back into it?

When my dad retired from his professor position, I was no longer going to get free tuition at Temple, so I jumped back across the river for in-state fees. I landed at the College of New Jersey in Trenton and decided to pick up my racquet again. I made the varsity tennis team and have been playing ever since. I graduated with a journalism degree some 10-plus years ago, looked around, and realized it was going to be a lot easier to make a living coaching and teaching tennis than as a writer.

Brilliant decision on your part.

Yeah, it’s really worked out. I teach private lessons year-round, coach boys’ and girls’ tennis at Moorestown High School, and write in my spare time. Strangely enough, I think I’m playing the best tennis of my life, better than my collegiate years. Last summer I had a successful grass-court run in the 35-and-up Nationals at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, and my 73-year-old dad and I won our first gold ball in the senior doubles tourney at Piping Rock out on Long Island.

What kind of game do you play?

Well, I’m 5’6″ and a half on a good day. A big serve is not really my thing. I’m left-handed, so growing up, my game was centered around athleticism to move around the court while playing a typical lefty style. Dad taught me an unusual grip I would call “extreme continental,” which I’ve used more as an adult. As I got older, I needed to put more pressure on opponents beyond just keeping the ball in play. I gravitated to more of a serve-and-volley game.

I ask this out of curiosity, not condescension—why did you go the self-publishing route for Tennis Tensions?

Around a decade ago, I had a couple of pieces in Sports Illustrated about my problems and frustrations with the tennis scoring system, a topic I had first written about in college. In 2017, I had an article in The Washington Post comparing it to the unfair, ridiculous Electoral College. I thought I was done with the topic, but then I read Ball Don’t Lie!: Myth, Genealogy, and Invention in the Cultures of Basketball by Yago Colás, a book about my other favorite sport. It introduced me to the notion of “white basketball unconscious,” the racial blind spots and inequities in how the sport’s origins are presented as opposed to how it actually evolved. The book stirred up a lot of ideas in me about how it applies to tennis. I began researching the sport from its earliest days and found a myriad of topics and issues beyond the archaic scoring system. It took off from there.

I knew I wanted to take my time and not be beholden to a deadline, so I never wrote up a Tennis Tensions book proposal. After five years, when I knew the book was close to being done, I showed it to a literary agent who felt it was more academic than commercial. Well, I’m not in the academic world and didn’t see the book that way. Rather than pitch it to an academic publisher and have them in turn say it was too commercial, I decided to do it myself. The financial setup also made a difference. I get $8.50 per Amazon sale, as opposed to a buck or two from a traditional publisher.

Can you please explain what the “white tennis unconscious” is and how it’s defined the sport for most of its existence?

It’s the privileged upper-class perspective that’s shaped the narrative, rules, and etiquette since lawn tennis was introduced in 1874 by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield. Yes, he invented lawn tennis, but not out of whole cloth. He took bits and pieces of other games that already existed, so the actual lineage of tennis gets lost to time. The origin story becomes one of well-mannered pastoral English aristocracy. It sets the course of the sport being for the country-club set and not for everyone else.

How did the games of badminton and racquets influence tennis, and why were they written out of the story?

Badminton was originally called poona after the city in India, Pune, where it was invented. British soldiers took to the game; there’s evidence they brought it to the U.K. as far back as the 1860s. The poona version of badminton was, and still is, played with a yellow woollen ball–later, hollow rubber balls were introduced for windy conditions–the nets were around five feet high, and players only served once. Originally, lawn tennis had basically the same rules and regulations; the one change in deference was Wingfield allowing for a single bounce. In those days, there was also a game played primarily in prisons and grimy English pubs called racquets. A ball was hit against a wall so there was no net, but it was definitely around long before lawn tennis. Both sports had a simple scoring system, first to 15 points, the same one Wingfield used.

So what changed?

Wingfield, and later even more so Wimbledon, wanted to be associated with what became known as “real” tennis—the indoor version we know as “court” tennis—which gradually lowered the nets, added a second serve, and utilized the scoring system that became the standard. Wingfield wanted lawn tennis to have the real tennis connection to royalty going back to medieval days, but that history is inaccurate. Real tennis started in 12th-century French streets and cloistered monasteries. There had been a time in 16th-century England when it was played by kings and students at Oxford and Cambridge, but by the time Wingfield invented lawn tennis, real tennis wasn’t popular at all. As played, lawn tennis principally evolved from badminton and racquets, but its origin story mythology evolved out of Wingfield not wanting his sport to be linked to an Indian game played by both men and women, or to the rowdy, gambling-heavy lower-class English version. He wanted to be associated with upper-crust British royalty, so at the first Wimbledon Championship, the convoluted scoring of the male-dominated real tennis was adopted.

Here we are, 150 years later, still beholden to an inequitable scoring system, a remnant of classicism, racism, and sexism. It’s the only sport where someone can score more points and win more games than their opponent and still lose. A five-hour match becomes much more a game of chance. The white tennis unconscious prefers aesthetics to arithmetic. Tennis is unique in that it’s uniquely inequitable. Just because both players are playing by the same rules doesn’t make those rules fair.

Setting aside how it started and how it’s going, I still find myself on the side of digging tennis because of its insane scoring. Do you find anything valuable in its singularity as a sport?

No. I’ve heard all the objections to my argument over the years, and none feel logical to me. Tradition is often mentioned, but Wimbledon didn’t keep Wingfield’s hourglass-shaped court, so the point is already moot. People tell me all the time they couldn’t imagine tennis any other way, but I don’t think anyone has ever tuned in to a match because they love the scoring system. We all watch tennis for the great points, incredible shots, different styles, and amazing matchups. Any notion of a more sophisticated, elevated sport because of the scoring system comes out of the white tennis unconscious. It’s not great.

You have a solution, which is?

I call it a tiebreaker match, the inverse of a match tiebreaker. The competitors play to a certain number of predetermined points—say, 50 for argument’s sake—serving alternates the same as in a tiebreaker. If you and I are playing, you serve first, then I serve two, and then you serve two, etc., until one of us hits 50 and wins. One tweak I would make is changing sides of the net after the first five points, then every 10, not six, so switching is less frequent and not between someone’s service turn. You still have to win by two, of course, so “deuce” in this example would be 48–48.

One intriguing scenario is a tournament where winning point totals rise as the rounds go on, like 40–50–60–80–100 or whatever, which could build a lot of drama…

Think of the spectacle of a major final with both participants entering knowing they have to win 100 points, not three sets. I don’t know exactly what the magic number should be; how many points must a man chase down before we can call it a match? I also think fans watching the US Open at home would love it. Only the biggest of die-hard fans watch a match from start to finish anyway, because you have no idea how long it’ll take. If it’s three hours to 100 points, you can lock in. Nothing would be lost.

And you advocate limiting serves to one, right?

Two serves came out of real tennis. I don’t know why we allow for a mulligan. From a competitive standpoint, players know they have a serve to waste. It allows for a certain degree of conditioned carelessness. People argue that it takes away some degree of strategy, but I don’t see why. It makes decision-making that much more crucial. A big server like Ben Shelton is still going to deploy it as a weapon. Others would be more judicious. Consistency and focus become more important. It would be fascinating to watch big-time players managing how to deliver every serve.

Are you able to enjoy watching tennis?

As long as the TV is on mute. After years of researching the actual history of tennis, I find the same tired commentary about big points and all that every match nauseating. To me, it’s about watching each point as it plays out and ignoring everything else around it. Even if we are ever lucky enough to watch a tiebreaker match, the scoring would still be secondary to the point at hand.

Have you converted anyone to your way of thinking about single serves and a complete overhaul of tennis scoring? Is there a Tennis Tensions movement afoot?

Enough people have been open to the ideas, especially those who have read the book. I don’t force it on anyone, but some of my frequent playing partners will play a one-serve tiebreaker match with me just to see if they like it. I strongly believe the more players who are exposed, the more it will grow. Obviously, at sanctioned tournaments I play by the established rules, but as more reviews of the book come in and more people become aware of it, the next natural step is to stage a full tournament. I’ve been in touch with a couple of people at Forest Hills trying to convince them to be the first tourney venue under a tiebreaker-match scoring system. Not everyone is opposed to change. The new professional Intennse league is experimenting with its rules and regulations, so I just need to find a tournament willing to give it a shot. When I do, you’ll be the first to know.

Your enthusiasm has moved me from dubious to intrigued.

I love tennis. It just needs to be changed from the ground up.

(Ed Note: This article originally appeared in OPEN #3, but a few minor inaccuracies were discovered after publication. This is a corrected version. The author regrets his error.)

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by David Bartholow

Playing in the Band

Jeffrey Silverstein talks guitar and tennis—and where they intersect—with Grateful Shred’s Austin McCutchen.

By Jeffrey Silverstein
March 26, 2026

Brooklyn-based musician Austin McCutchen is best known as guitarist-vocalist of the Grateful Shred and Blue Drivers, as well as leading his own band, the Western Stars. In recent years McCutchen has become an avid tennis player. A relatively late arrival to the game, McCutchen fell in love with tennis in Los Angeles during the pandemic, drawn to the same rhythms, feel, and focus that shape his musical life. Along with his wife, Ali, McCutchen also cofounded Racquet Collective, an effort aimed at bringing more social connection to the tennis community in Las Vegas through free events and gatherings. We caught up with McCutchen in between tours about developing his game, navigating the noise of New York City courts, and building community via sport.

Where did music and sport intersect for you as a young person?
I grew up in the Pentecostal Church between the Ozarks of Missouri and the west suburbs of Chicago. My early childhood was spent in Missouri in the Evangelical Assemblies of God Church. B3 organ, piano, bass player, drum kit on the stage. Good music. My whole family sings. My brother is a music minister. I was around it from day one.

My brother is seven years older than me. He’s always been the sports person in the family. I’m the youngest of three. He played a lot of baseball and then in high school was on a state-winning football team. I had never been into sports—I was into LEGOs and computer games. When high school came around, we had just moved back to the suburbs of Chicago from Missouri. I went through the process of trying to figure out what my sport was. I tried football; I was horrible. I did wrestling for one year. That was weird. It just didn’t click.

I ended up doing shot put and discus and later found running in my early 20s. By the time I was a junior in high school, I was so invested in doing music, I kind of went full tilt. I was a choir kid by the time senior year rolled around. I was just like, “Sports aren’t for me, I’m just going to do music.” I got an acoustic and got more into guitar. I put the idea of sports away.

Where does tennis enter the equation?
When I was in high school, I had some friends who were on the tennis team. We had a choir trip where they brought racquets, and we hit a little bit. They were like, “Oh, why don’t you do this?” For whatever reason, it didn’t sink in that it was something I would like to do. In the context of high school and the suburb I lived in, the barrier for entry felt tough. You had to go through the proper channels: sign up with a coach, do tennis camp, whatever it was. Flash forward, I moved to Los Angeles in 2013. Around 2019 I had a friend who, out of the blue, was just like, “Hey, do you want to go hit some tennis balls?” I had a roommate for the first couple of months of the pandemic who grew up playing. We would go and find tennis courts that weren’t locked up. He moved out, and then it became just me, focused on finding a wall to hit against and starting to look at specific skills. What’s going on with my ground stroke? What’s up with my backhand?

It turned into more of an individual pursuit.
Totally. Like how you would practice a scale or licks. I could see a direct correlation. It’s just repetition. That turned into serving, because that’s something you can do by yourself and you just get a bucket of balls. Because I spent basically a year playing by myself, I don’t have an amazing serve, but I have a consistent serve. It’s a strong part of my game. You kind of have to have that if you want to win.

What makes for an exciting opponent on the court?
I like a lot of variety in people’s playing. I personally try to incorporate a lot of variety in the way I play. When you’re playing against someone who is doing a lot of different things, it keeps it fun. It’s great if you’re evenly matched, but even if you’re not, if they can keep you running and change up shots a lot, it makes the game more fun.

There was a certain time where I wasn’t good enough to know why I was getting my ass kicked. I knew I couldn’t get to the ball. At a certain point you have enough clarity with the game to where you’re like, “Oh, well, I shouldn’t put the ball there because I know that they know what to do with the ball when I put it there.” It takes a certain amount of awareness to be able to do something different. You have to be able to react to what they’re doing and strategize with that information. It takes a lot of focus and time, learning how to react.

What parts of your game were more challenging to develop?
Well, it never stops, for sure. I have a pretty strong backhand slice. Kind of to a fault. It can limit the variety of my backhand. I’m working on trying to get a two-handed backhand. Then the variety comes into play; you switch it up because they expect that you’re just going to do the thing that you’ve been doing. That becomes the weapon, the change-up.

What about the skill of tracking the ball?
I played this morning, and we had a good time. The guy I was playing with, we were pretty evenly matched. I was making a concerted effort to, like, really look at the ball, you know? People have this in baseball, too. Good batters can see the seams on the ball. It’s similar in that way to tennis. You really see how fast the backspin or the topspin is. You do it enough to where you know how to touch the ball in a different way. That’s been really exciting for me lately.

What are some of your favorite tennis sounds?
The pop off a nice forehand is great. I get a pretty big toss on the serve, and you know if you smack it just right there’s a satisfying feeling knowing that you hit it right in the sweet spot. I’ve been finding a lot of joy at the net with volley play that is soft, just getting the right touch. That’s what fucks people up. You go to the net, and they think you’re just going to crash the net, and then you do something more finessed. It’s a good feeling when you pull it off.

How does playing in New York compare with L.A.?
It’s been fun playing tennis in New York the past couple of years. There’s a lot of cool courts here. They vary in the neighborhoods they’re in. It’s a little bit more of an effort to get a court, but it’s rewarding in that way. In L.A. there are a lot of serene courts and plenty of availability. You can kind of play whenever. Here you’re thinking about the sounds around you. There’s these courts I play at here where there is a train that runs directly next to where you are playing every five minutes. You’ll be in a peaceful headspace, then it goes full train white noise. If you’re hitting the ball, you can’t hear the contact point at all. It’s completely washed out. If it’s not that, there is a marching band practicing across the street, or any number of sirens blasting. It’s just so chaotic. It is kind of a fun challenge to block out everything that’s going on around you and really focus. You really have to go to a special place.

What led to the formation of the Racquet Collective?
My partner Ali and I met while playing tennis. Our first date was a tennis date. That was a formative, foundational thing for us. It was a regular activity that we could do together and still get to do together. She’s originally from Las Vegas, fourth-generation. We were trying to figure out a way to live together. My place in L.A. was tiny, and her place in New York is pretty small. We needed to find common ground. We had an opportunity to rent this ranch out in Red Rock Canyon, her grandma’s property. In 2024 we moved to Vegas. I didn’t know anyone there, we were just trying a thing.

As tennis people, we’ve both been inspired by community-based programs and events, whether it’s in L.A. or New York. Here in Brooklyn there’s the Fort Greene Tennis Association. There’s something called TennisGrip—cool meetups and organized doubles play. They’ll rent the court and let people play for free. There are watch parties for the Grand Slam finals. In L.A. I’ve done something called LVBL, basically a king of the court scenario. There’s also great tennis shops—Racket Doctor, a hub for tennis in Atwater Village. Great community offerings.

When we made the move, we were able to see that the communities in Vegas were very siloed. There’s the USTA league—that’s kind of what everyone does there. There are different country clubs, and they all have their own teams. There are various tennis centers that have their own teams. I was going to the Darling Tennis Center, a great facility that offers clinics. They have a ton of teams based out of there. USTA is fun, but we felt like something was lacking on the social side. We had a lot of time on our hands living in the desert. We were actually on a road trip to escape the heat for a bit in Colorado. We’re driving down the highway and happen to see something called “collective” and both started to think, “Racquet Collective, what would that be?”

We started scheming ideas on what we could do. The initial idea was to put on events that were free that would bring the community together and create space for players to meet each other—to connect just for the love of it rather than the competitive USTA vibe, which is awesome in a different way. We put on a couple of what we felt were successful community events. We did one at the Westgate. It used to be the International Hotel, where Elvis lived in the penthouse. Then it was the Hilton for a long time. Then it became the Westgate. It’s a cool hotel, they have four or six courts behind the pool. There’s a little clubhouse. Seemingly they don’t get used that much. We had been poking around trying to find cool tennis places on the strip and across town. We did a Liveball event with the guys from L.A. LVBL. We actually reached out to the Second Serve; I think they helped repost it, which was really nice of them. Ali was super motivated to get on the socials, so we found a lot of local people to come together. We also did a king and queen of the court tournament at the Darling Tennis Center a few months later. Around that time we felt like the desert was not the right fit for us. So Racquet Collective is on hold for now.

Do you have a community of musicians who play?
In L.A. there are a lot of musicians that play tennis and play tennis well. It’s been a joy for me to meet other musicians where this is a crossover. You are going to see the show and you run into your buddy who you hit with every other week. Then you’re talking about tennis and music. Community-wise it’s pretty dreamy. It feels affirming.

Do you get to play on tour?
I do. If it’s a van tour, on a day off, it’s definitely a mission. I got to play at a really nice facility in Chico—a tennis club built in the ’70s. My hack has been finding tennis centers wherever we go. If it’s a bus tour, you arrive at the town in the middle of the night or the morning. If you have the day or morning before load-in, you can go hit somewhere. That’s super nice. I’ll see if there is a tennis center that offers a clinic, and usually you can find one for 20 to 30 dollars and hit for an hour and a half with a coach. You’ll meet local people. It’s fun because every time you are there, all the regulars want to know what your deal is. They think it’s cool you’re on tour.

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by David Bartholow

Sunshine Daydream

A look back at our on and off court activities during the west coast half of the sunshine double.

By TSS
MARCH 20, 2026

Indian Wells 2026
Billboard & custom player edition frisbee

The Low Desert Open
The Courts, Borrego Springs, CA
Photography courtesy of Luke W. Schmuecker and The Courts
View more photos

Yonex Pop-up
Venice Beach, California
Photography courtesy of Nick Hoag

ADVANTAGE: The Big Little Tennis Fair
Palm Springs, CA

LVBL Three Surface Slam
Mission Hills Country Club
Rancho Mirage, CA

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by David Bartholow

The 2026 Australian Open Shoe Report

Our favorites for performance, lifestyle, and everything in between.

By Tim Newcomb
January 23, 2026

It’s all about Melbourne-themed collections and tournament-specific colorways in the 2026 Australian Open shoe closet. Coco Gauff leads the way with her signature shoe, and while a few players and brands—such as K-Swiss with Andrey Rublev and Frances Tiafoe, and Nike with Naomi Osaka—have special Australian Open player-edition models, many athletes are simply sporting their sponsor’s inline colorways for the tournament.

Most majors tend to have a color or two that a few brands latch on to (unbeknownst to each other, of course), but the AO 2026 is a smorgasbord of brightness, with neon yellow, orange, red, blue, and purple all part of the array.

New Balance CG2

Coco Gauff

Coco Gauff says her AO kit design isn’t just concerned with performance, “but also about style and self-expression.” Her signature CG2 on-court shoes from New Balance play to that theme with a colorway inspired by the Australian landscape meant to “radiate optimism” with hot marigold (think bright orange), navy blue, and daybreak periwinkle. Gauff says that, paired with her perforated stretch tank and pleated skirt in either a subdued purple or a strong orange, the entire kit shares her “love for bold colors and the beach.”

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K-Swiss K-Frame Speed Rublo

Andrey Rublev

K-Swiss is embracing player-edition shoes aplenty in Melbourne. The brand revealed Andrey Rublev’s signature K-Frame Speed Rublo in a Baltic Sea (light blue), dazzling blue, and white colorway, while most of the other K-Swiss players are wearing the Hypercourt Pinnacle or Ultrashot 4 with the same colors reversed.

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Nike GP Challenge 1.5

Jannik Sinner

Jannik Sinner has gone in a different color direction. His Nike GP Challenge 1.5 Premium shoes have a brown-yellow colorway, listed on the brand’s retail site as “saffron quarts/olive flak/sail/black,” and feature a custom tongue design that calls out his past championships. The new GP Challenge 1.5 Premium offers slight tweaks on the first model, mostly with a touch more room in the forefoot (by tweaking the Air Zoom design, Nike says), additional durability on the upper around the toes, and a gusset on the tongue to keep it in place.

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K-Swiss Killshot 4

Frances Tiafoe

Frances Tiafoe still doesn’t have an official deal with K-Swiss, but that hasn’t stopped the brand from cranking out player-edition model after player-edition model for the American since he started pairing his Lululemon apparel with the shoes in January 2025. This year, the Ultrashot 4 “Big Foe Aus Open” features white, “wild bluebell,” and “frond” with a special “Big Foe” graphic on both the tongue and the upper.

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On Roger Pro 3

Ben Shelton

Ben Shelton is sporting the as-yet-unreleased On the Roger Pro 3 in a light yellow with white, officially known as linen and lime. On athletes in the Roger Pro Fire also have the linen and lime colorway, and Iga Swiatek is embracing all things linen and lime as well.

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Wilson Intrigue Tour

Marta Kostyuk

Wilson signed an entirely new crop of Tennis 360 athletes, players wearing Wilson head to toe while using the brand’s frames, but Marta Kostyuk remains the OG Wilson 360 athlete. Her Intrigue Tour for the Australian courts featured (past tense since she lost in the first round) a white base paired with deep red and bright red accenting, further showing how the Chicago-based brand is going all in on the signature brand color of red. This colorway spans the entire lineup of Wilson athletes playing in either a new Rush 5 Tour model or the Intrigue.

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Nike GP Challenge 1.5 Osaka

Naomi Osaka

Really, the drama attached to Naomi Osaka’s look isn’t the shoes, but they do play a part. The jellyfish-inspired kit made waves during one of the final walk-out moments of the first round and included quite a bit of theatrics that weren’t part of the actual performance attire, but her on-court dress was still completely custom, including the GP Challenge sneakers made to match that included her “NO” logo on the tongue.

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Asics is outfitting sponsored players in the fresh Melbourne Collection, highlighted by the new Solution Speed FF 4 in a white base with accents of light blue and pink. Belinda Bencic leads the Asics contingent on the court with an exclusive match jacquard dress, while Lorenzo Musetti is wearing an exclusive match jacquard short-sleeve shirt to pair with the Melbourne Collection sneaker colorways.

IMAGE COURTESY OF ASICS

Alex de Minaur may have bolted from Asics for Wilson for the Australian Open in a new Tennis 360 deal that includes shoes, but his footwear hasn’t quite caught up. The Australian is still wearing Asics shoes, just with the branding covered.

Aryna Sabalenka again went with the star treatment on her Nike footwear to match her custom dress. In a shoe that looks uncannily like what she wore at the 2025 US Open, Sabalenka’s Vapor 12 Premium has a white base with bright peach accents and silver starlike sparkles. There’s a tiger head on the tongue. It’s basically the same look she had in New York.

GETTY

K-Swiss isn’t letting off the gas when it comes to player-edition models. Ekaterina Alexandrova and Lyudmila Samsonova both get an Ultrashot 4 in white, lunar rock, and purple haze, special colorways just for them.

IMAGE COURTESY OF K-SWISS

Babolat recently launched the new Jet Mach 4, and we’ve seen Cam Norrie sporting the fresh release in both an all-red version and a white base with red accents.

Nike is embracing plenty of color in Melbourne this year, both in the apparel and on the footwear. But the star of show for AO footwear is neon yellow. Star players such as Carlos Alcaraz (Vapor 12), Amanda Anisimova (Vapor Pro 3), and Mirra Andreeva (GP Challenge 1.5) are all in bright yellow shoes, with each sporting Nike’s iconic late 80s “Aqua Gear” branding and embellishments.

IMAGES COURTESY OF NIKE

After going green last year, New Balance turns up to Melbourne embracing all things purple for players not named Coco Gauff. The popular FuelCell 996v6 and Fresh Foam X CT-Rally v2 both sport shades of purple.

Yonex athletes have a few colorways to choose from in the 2026 Melbourne Collection, even within the Eclipsion family of shoes. Athletes will be switching between a cream-based design with deep blue and a navy design with white and a blue-and-white-speckled outsole. As is typical, many of the Yonex players get their name and country flag added to the shoe’s upper.

IMAGE COURTESY OF YONEX

Mizuno has the all-new Wave Exceed Tour 7 in white and dazzling blue for the men and ice water and lightning yellow for the women. Players wearing the Wave Enforce Tour 2 have the same colorway combinations in the more robust design.

Daniil Medvedev is sporting all sorts of color and geometry on his Lacoste shirt, but that doesn’t leave much room for busyness elsewhere, as his player-edition AG-LT23 Ultra comes more subtle in his mix of white and yellow, but still with his gaming-inspired logo.

Madison Keys is still rocking pairs of the Nike Vapor X.

Adidas athletes have a range of shoes to choose from for Australia, led by the launching of the new Barricade. The orange-dominant color scheme in Melbourne from the German brand makes its way to footwear in a lucid orange, core black, pure orange combination available to players, although most athletes are still wearing an all-white version (Jessica Pegula, for example) or a white base with hints of orange, à la Alexander Zverev.

Daria Kasatkina, a Russian-turned-Australian pro, got a personal touch on her custom shoes from adidas, with her nickname and the Australian flag printed on the upper.

Leylah Fernandez was once one of the Shoe Report’s favorite athletes to watch, as the Lululemon athlete didn’t sign a shoe deal when she joined the Canadian apparel company. She’s worn everything from On to Puma basketball shoes to her dad’s unreleased brand but has seemingly settled in on K-Swiss, having been consistent with them since summer 2025 and now wearing a Hypercourt.

Follow Tim Newcomb’s tennis gear coverage on Instagram at Felt Alley Tennis.

PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP FOR THE TSS NEWSLETTER

by David Bartholow

Mixed Doubles

Sydney

Mixed Doubles

Photography by Adrian Mesko
Originally Featured Volume 2 of OPEN Tennis — BUY

Sydney

Mixed Doubles

Photography by Adrian Mesko
Originally Featured Volume 2 of OPEN Tennis — BUY

For the second edition of OPEN Tennis magazine, Adrian Mesko photographed models Franny Richardson, Serena Wardell, Torin Verdone & Patrick Kremmer in Tamarama, a beachside suburb of his native Sydney. Styled by Gemma Keil, the shoot captures the crew as they meet for an après beach hit and giggle. To see the whole shoot, pick up a copy of OPEN Tennis Vol. 2. And look out for the debonaire Mr. Mesko on the grounds of this year’s Australian Open.

Volume 3 — Now Available

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by David Bartholow

The Ghost Writers

Amazon’s got AI churning out tennis biographies by the dozen, but to what end?

By Simon Cambers
Illustration by Dalbert B. Vilarino

Featured in Volume 3 of OPEN Tennis — BUY

The Ghost Writers

Amazon’s got AI churning out tennis biographies by the dozen, but to what end?

By Simon Cambers
Illustration by Dalbert B. Vilarino
Featured in Volume 3 of OPEN Tennis — BUY

Illustration by Dalbert B. Vilarino

Illustration by Dalbert B. Vilarino

Anyone who has ever written a book—be it on tennis, on other sports, or in fact on any subject—will know how difficult it is to make it a success. Unless you happen to have invented Harry Potter, it is incredibly hard to produce a bestseller. For the vast majority of authors, writing books is not a path to riches. And it is becoming even more difficult, thanks to AI.

Three years ago, I was lucky enough to have a book published. The Roger Federer Effect, cowritten with my friend and colleague Simon Graf, came out in October 2022. Timed somewhat fortuitously with Federer’s retirement, it was well received, with the German version selling well in Switzerland.

In the days and weeks after publication, I became somewhat addicted to checking the Amazon bestselling lists, a habit that has proved hard to shake off, even now. But those Amazon lists also serve a purpose: They’re the easiest way to get at least an idea about how your book is doing.

Type “Roger Federer biography” into a search on Amazon, and you’ll find a host of books about the 20-time Grand Slam winner. These include books by well-known writers like Rene Stauffer, Christopher Clarey, Chris Bowers, and even our own. However, there are also a number of books—ahead of ours in the list—all self-published, all with similarly laid-out covers, all slightly artificial-looking.

Wanting to know a little more, I clicked on one: Roger Federer biography: Mastering the Court: The Unstoppable Rise and Enduring Legacy of a Tennis Icon, by “Graham Newberry.” Not recognizing the author was a red flag in itself—the tennis world is a small one—while its cover was slightly disturbing, picturing someone resembling Federer, but wearing Asics shoes instead of Nike or On, and some random, rogue letters—“RIIS”—in the title on the cover. On further inspection, things became clearer. Newberry is a prolific “writer,” with several titles to his name. Impressive, right? Well, no. A closer look reveals that many of these books—covering the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Wayne Gretzky, and Lionel Messi—were published within days of one another. He even managed to write four biographies of former U.S. presidents on successive days.

Newberry is far from alone. Check out “Juan T. Parker,” “Sydney J. Prince,” and “George Clinton,” among many, many others. Clinton has written biographies of Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Alexander Zverev, Elena Rybakina, Emma Raducanu, Naomi Osaka, Nick Kyrgios, Casper Ruud, Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Madison Keys, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Belinda Bencic, and Olga Danilovic. None of these authors have a digital footprint outside of Amazon, and almost none of them have any reviews.

Some of these clearly AI-generated books are comical. Chapter 1 of Newberry’s Federer book is all about…Serena Williams. Ahem. Some are even laugh-out-loud, like the books by Charles B. Prints (or Charles A. Prints), which reimagine Petra Kvitova and Ons Jabeur—and Jake [sic] Draper—as famous table tennis stars, but use all their tennis and life backstories to do so.

Some books are downright weird, like Harrison F. Cole’s biography of Carlos Alcaraz, the cover of which is definitely not a photo of Alcaraz; it’s no tennis player I’ve ever seen and looks vaguely like an actor or a singer in a boy band, wearing a collared, sleeveless top. His biography of Jannik Sinner carries a cover photo that does not even try to make it look like the Italian, instead showing a woman.

Many of these books pop up in the days after a big event. When Coco Gauff won the French Open in June, a number of suspicious titles appeared. Sabrina M. Ellsworth managed to publish an Aryna Sabalenka biography in September, two days after she penned one on Jasmine Paolini.

AI has made all this possible, allowing factories (or individuals) to produce books en masse. Writing in the New Yorker in October, Stephen Witt reported that there are thought to be almost 4 hundred trillion words on the indexed internet,” but many of them are useless—high quality text is rare, and the supply is finite. “Since A.I. chatbots are recycling existing work, they rely on cliché, and their phrasing grows stale quickly. It’s difficult to get fresh, high quality writing out of theme—I have tried,” Witt wrote.

But perhaps a bigger problem than lousy prose is the lack of regulation. Amazon is more than happy to allow these books to flood the market, pushing legitimate titles down its search engine. Some of these books are even sponsored.

Recent "works" by Harrison F. Cole and Charles B. Prints.

Recent "works" by Harrison F. Cole and Charles B. Prints.

In theory, if a book is entirely AI-generated and published via the Kindle platform, the author must tell Amazon. However, Amazon doesn’t pass on that knowledge to buyers. If it’s “AI-assisted,” then the author can keep quiet. It took them until late 2023 to bring in a rule restricting authors to the number of books they can self-publish on a given day, to three. It took me 18 months to cowrite one book.

“If you make a keyword search for a particular topic or even an author, you have to wade through several pages of often irrelevant results,” said George Walkley, a U.K.-based expert in AI and publishing. “I think that’s probably the biggest short-term impact for publishers, that it may deter people from finding the book that they were looking for.”

Walkley says the low production costs mean authors of AI books have to sell only a few to make a profit. “I think that really points to what the long game is,” he said. “It’s a volume play. They only need to sell a few copies, whereas you or I would have to be looking to hundreds or thousands of sales of a book in order to earn back the investment we made in it, in terms of time.”

Walkley agrees Amazon should do more to regulate but doesn’t think they should promote traditionally published books above self-published ones, because not everyone has the luxury of finding a publisher. “Amazon can attempt to use software to detect what is AI-written and what is written by human beings. But again, this isn’t 100 percent reliable. I think Amazon has a real challenge here in trying to keep an open publishing ecosystem in an era where AI is available.”

There’s another danger, thanks to AI: plagiarism. During my research, I found another book on Federer, the sample of which revealed that it was almost identical to The Master, by Christopher Clarey. The author—“Shelly Phomsouvandara”—had also written a book on the former boxer Ed Latimore, which turned out to be stolen from Latimore’s autobiography. I contacted both Clarey and Latimore, and, with the help of their publishers, the books were removed.

Clarey says Amazon needs to do more. “It just seems so easy in the age of AI to be able to do these things,” he said. “I think it’s on Amazon and the people who are providing the links to the sales to at least do all they can to avoid this being put up online, maybe raise the bar in terms of how hard it is to get a book on there. Amazon responded to my initial request to explain the guidelines, wanting to know my deadline, but then didn’t get back to me.

“The bigger question for me, really, is the AI aspect of it, and what happens to sports book authors and book authors going forward. Because it’s just so easy to produce a work, probably, of decent quality with very, very little effort by aggregating all the known published thought on a particular figure.”

AI can’t go out and talk to people and can’t witness events, which gives journalists an edge. But when it comes to historical books, it is improving all the time. Nevertheless, even in the tennis titles I’ve seen, there is not a single example of quoted speech. No information is ever attributed to anyone, and no notes on sources or indices are forthcoming.

“I certainly don’t think it can be done as well as a top biographer, or somebody who’s really spent, like I did, two years on a book about [Rafael] Nadal [The Warrior], using all kinds of new reporting and my old references, my old material, and my perspective over those many years. But certainly, somebody can produce something that’s able to compete with something that I put a huge amount of sweat and effort into, very quickly. So that’s really the challenge: how it dilutes the market, floods the market, and makes it thrive.”

Given all that, it’s remarkable to see that these “books” have the temerity to include a disclaimer discouraging anyone, for reasons that are something of a mystery, from reproducing any of their content without permission.