BackWimbledon | Ground realities
Didn't get tickets? Or can't watch on TV? Enjoy Wimbledon from home using these easy tools
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It is not the end of the world if you’re not going to be at the All England Club (AELTC) at Wimbledon this year. We’ve got just the tools that will keep you abreast with what’s going on there—insights, behind-the-scene news and analysis and if you’re lucky, a former Wimbledon champion’s interview.
These tools aren’t about match scores—a simple Google search can tell you that. Instead, they promise to add spice to your tennis experience. All you’ll need is an Internet connection and, optionally, headphones.
Tennis Mailbag
Try catching Jon Wertheim, executive editor of the Sports Illustrated magazine, at his desk in the press centre building at the AELTC during Wimbledon fortnight and it’s almost impossible. Always on the move, digging around, catching up with a multitude of matches throughout the day, players and their comments after they win or lose, Wertheim works to satiate the appetite of thousands who follow his mailbags in Tennis Mailbag, online.
Apart from his weekly columns, where he takes on reader questions from all over the world, New York-based Wertheim ups the ante during the four Grand Slam tournaments that he travels to. A daily update—he calls it mailbag—carries the lead story of the day. Apart from this, he answers questions on all things tennis (he claims to get more than 100 queries a day during Grand Slams).
The Tennis Podcast
There are several podcasts on the Internet but let’s stick to this one for now. David Law is quintessentially English—he is also a BBC Radio 5 Live commentator and the media director of the AEGON Tennis Championships (a grass-court warm-up event to Wimbledon in London).
The Tennis Podcast (TTP) is a free podcast available on the iTunes, Android (through an app called Stitcher) and BlackBerry platforms. Launched in May 2012, this is a weekly podcast, each episode lasting from about 40 minutes to under an hour.
Law teams up with colleague Catherine Whitaker for the podcast episodes—a typical show format would be to chat about the week’s events and make predictions, followed by a “big interview of the week" with either a player in the news or a famous tennis coach. The radio quality is good given that TTP usually doesn’t record in a studio; at last year’s Championships, for instance, Law and Whitaker recorded all their episodes from within the AELTC grounds.
Law says: “This is a downloadable tennis radio show that could keep people up to date about the sport, but not take itself too seriously. It is also to introduce listeners to characters in the sport, some of whom they may know, and some they don’t."
CourtCast
ESPN has an online platform called “CourtCast". This will give the most basic information—the scorecards of matches. But ESPN also aims to put together a video, “Five Things We Learned", every day which will review the top news of the day. Another video, “Digital Serve", will preview the next day’s scene. You could also go through their daily notebook, “Grass Stains", that will wrap up the “best and worst of the day". If you’d like to read about your favourite tennis player, check out “Star Watch", a daily blog that will focus on one of the game’s top players.
The others
We suggest you also keep an eye on Tennis Space, Straight Sets, TenniShorts and Beyond the Baseline by Courtney Nguyen.
tThe Tennis Space, for instance, is managed by sports journalists who also seem to leverage their ability to get the top names of the game to talk—from former Wimbledon champion Conchita Martinez giving coaching tips to India’s Mahesh Bhupathi giving tips on how to select a doubles player, apart from the daily buzz from the tennis courts.
Straight Sets aims to give you the story behind the news, like how Australian Bernard Tomic’s controversial father watched him play at the Aegon Championships in London recently.
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