Dear fellow tennis enthusiasts,
Time flies! With the Australian Open coming to a close, The Tennis Notebook actually turned 1 on Jan. 18th! With so much happening, I did not have a chance to send all of you a letter with a reflection of this past year and my goals for 2016.
Reflections on 2015
Last year, I started this publication with zero expectation. It was essentially stress relief from my every day work as a Ph.D student with dwindling passion for my current field. It started out rather rough — we had 5 followers from January to the end of April [3 were good friends of mine and me…]. Then, I decided to publish my first data piece on my favorite player — Rafael Nadal.
The reception was overwhelming and all of sudden, I had my own niche and an audience that wanted more! From there, I also introduced Visual Draw Analysis, which basically looks like we doodled all over the draw with our thoughts. From these Tennis Note 7 to 9, I suddenly attracted writers to our wonderful group — Dominic Tinodi gave us some insight into past and present college players participating at Slams. Divyaraj Singh wrote an incredible analysis on Rafael Nadal prior to his clash with Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros and it was featured on FiveThirtyEight’s live blog. Isaac Samuel Victor Brute evaluated the drop shot in 42 WTA matches. ramon osa wrote a wonderful piece on Serena Williams. Charles Allen contacted me some time in August and since then, the depth in my data pieces has gotten better due to his amazing data visual tools and perhaps, the most famous piece of last year was the one Isaac, Charles and I put together about Serena Williams — an audiovisual data driven history. This was a month of work and even though Serena lost the US Open, this piece was well received by both the tennis and data community — trending on DataIsBeautiful and featured on WTA’s Daily Insider.
The final unique feature I implemented towards the end of the year was connecting academia with the tennis fans. We featured work from Dr. Stephanie Kovalchik and Prof. Filippo Radicchi. Stephanie and I also bonded over our mutual dislike over IBM Keys.
Goals for 2016
There are so many things I want to accomplish and I am not sure if all of this will be possible.
- Host the first ever Tennis Data Storytelling Challenge successfully. Click the image for more information and Sign Up! It is currently hosted by me and Tennis Abstract and sponsored by Silk Stories and Tennis Visuals so we actually have prize money! All articles related to this will be under the tag Patterns of Play — including notes from our sponsors.
- Bring in more writers and grow the team! We are always open and your piece does not necessarily have to be data based. In fact, one on feature of the Tennis Notebook that has not taken off is Courtside Chat — bringing past tennis matches or tournaments to life. We love creativity, interactive storytelling, historical articles, or even tasteful comedy pieces! I am also looking for a partner in crime for our draw doodles and any photographers/artists who want to assist in making our pieces better.
- Find a co-editor. The Tennis Notebook is a passion project. We currently make zero income by publishing articles. That being said, as a graduate student trying to finish my Ph.D by Spring 2017 — I need help! I am looking for someone who is passionate in tennis, who can commit time, effort, and creativity, in order to make The Tennis Notebook much better than last year. If you are interested, send me an email with a link to an unlisted Medium article: introduce yourself, your past experience and sample work, and what you can bring to this publication.
- Start a special feature called The Ebbs and Flows of the Big Four. The first two articles have been drafted but as a preview: the motivation behind this is to explore the Big Four (Holy Trinity) as a unit and the dynamic shifts between them over the last decade.
- Write more pieces about tennis analysis in academia — I think the lack of this is one of the major flaws in tennis coverage. There are some brilliantly written scientific articles on tennis and because I am in academia, I have access to them in order to bring them to life. Along these lines, as a physics and engineering major, I also want to bridge the gaps between STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] and tennis. This may or may not include me own experiments!
- Explore tough data-driven questions. The name of this publication, The Tennis Notebook, is due to the fact that I actually have a notebook full of ideas — many of which require a lot more learning AND data. The first step for me is to learn Machine Learning in order to apply it to tennis. Hopefully, I will finish my course by May in time to create one big piece by the end of the year!
- Include audio podcasts or narration. I love podcasts and when I implemented a 10 minute narration with the Serena piece, everyone loved it. I want to continue this going forward, when appropriate. I do have background in recording and production but if you are interested in getting involved, email me!
- Write 26 tennis notes and get ~1K more followers. As the The Tennis Notebook team grew, we actually reached this goal last year so let’s do it again! This means four things: like, share, comment, and follow!
- Send a monthly letter to all of you! I want to make to be able to share my favorite moments in tennis — articles, social media, etc — every month.
Bring on a whole year of new adventures!
