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The Tennis Tribe started in 2016 as a doubles blog.
“If you’re looking for a way to level up your doubles game, without long hours and weeks of practice, then this is for you” we said.
Today, The Tennis Tribe has grown into a website with tennis gear reviews, professional tournament guides, and interviews with top coaches and players. Our tennis lessons have expanded to include singles, technique, and the mental game.
We still focus very much on doubles, with a goal to help you become a better player, grow the game of doubles along with the sport of tennis.
My name is Will and I started The Tennis Tribe to help people (and myself) get better at doubles strategy. Here’s a little bit about my tennis experience and background.
I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and am constantly trying to improve my doubles game. I’m fascinated by the strategy of doubles and think most players don’t take the time to think about what they’re doing on the court. That’s where I try to help 🙂
We have several regular contributing writers at The Tennis Tribe.
Chase Bartlett was the men’s tennis captain at St. Edward’s University, an NCAA DII tennis program. He won the 2018 DII Regional Championships (image right). In 2020, he will play for DI University of Montana.
He currently has UTR rating of 12. Chase also has coaching experience at the Austin Tennis Academy, where he competed as a junior tennis player.
Chase writes most of our singles strategy content.
Hanlon has played tennis for over 20 years and is a former DIII player. He was known for his excellent lobs in college along with a rock-solid backhand.
Hanlon currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where he works as a public relations specialist.
He writes long-form content for our Tribe Talk area of the website and manages our social media profiles. His writing has been featured on SI.com and is recognized by some of tennis’ biggest names.
When I started playing 4.5 USTA tournaments, I noticed that every single team did the same thing. People were scared to get passed up the line, and as a result, almost no one ever poached or attacked at the net in doubles matches.
I knew since I didn’t have 20 hours a week to practice, I’d have to play smarter than most people to win matches. So I started playing differently than everyone else. While playing a match in Austin, Texas, I told my partner to hit all kick serves out to the backhand. I started poaching and faking on every point.
The result??
I found that we won about 2 out of 3 points doing this. Yes, I did get beat up the line, but for every one of those, the opponent would miss two. We kept doing this and won the match, literally giving our opponents a down the line backhand on over half of our service points.
Since then I’ve had dozens of people tell me they “hate playing me” because of how I play at the net. Some people have told me I’m crazy, but I actually think it’s a completely reasonable way to play. Although it may not look this way, every single move I make at the net is very calculated based on my knowledge of my opponent and tennis in general.
In the story above, I knew a down the line backhand is a much more difficult than a crosscourt groundstroke, so I poached a lot on the ad side to make them hit a lower percentage shot. I decided to create the Tennis Tribe as a way to share my strategies with others and connect doubles players with each other to share their own ideas.