Racquet
Established in 2026, Racquet is a print magazine and media company that focuses on the game—and culture—of tennis.
I’ve contributed essays, and write a twice-monthly advice column for their website called See You In Court. There, I heed reader questions about tennis, be they desperate (Help! I’ve won a few matches moonballing and now I can’t stop!), desperate in a different way (Where are the hot young tennis players in my area?) or life-threatening (Is it just me or are all tennis shoes fugly?).
pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing —
pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing —
pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing —
pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing —
pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing — pitching — writing —
Something to know about me in 2025 is that I’ve become the neighborhood voyeur. Four freshly renovated tennis courts opposite my apartment beckon me daily; a hooked index finger tempting me with good, honest time. An hour’s all I need to thrash about, try and prove something inconsequential to myself, defog the mirrors of my mind and leave a better woman. Only instead of playing, I watch.
Something to know about me in 2025 is that I’ve become the neighborhood voyeur. Four freshly renovated tennis courts opposite my apartment beckon me daily; a hooked index finger tempting me with good, honest time. An hour’s all I need to thrash about, try and prove something inconsequential to myself, defog the mirrors of my mind and leave a better woman. Only instead of playing, I watch.
Not by choice. I’m injured, and sheepishly so. Back stiffness I ignored became a herniated disc I couldn’t. Where tennis could once insulate me from the humdrum of gyms, I’d no choice but to join one to strength-train to build a butt to hold up a degenerate back.
Gyms and suffering notwithstanding, I can’t step outside without hearing the pleasant thwack of racquet meeting ball, or seeing a beet-faced disciple—one of us—at war with their mind-body connection. Sometimes, I set my burgeoning ass down on a bench and watch awhile.
These public courts—as with most in New York—draw players that are united in spirit, but divided on ability. Like yodeling at a funeral, pedigreed players finesse their backhand overheads next to hatchlings hitting forehands with elbows bent like boomerangs.Players old and new seem happy to the untrained eye, which is to say their happiness is routinely threatened by self-doubt and frustration, core tenets of the recreational mindset.
What follows is a scene report from one morning in late March.
Watching What I Can’t Have (A Hit)
~
A guy and a girl; both 30-something. Their footwork and easy tempers imply two childhood players. His forehand is rhythmic and precise, though his one-handed backhand is so disorderly I suspect its provenance is Freudian, not unlike my forehand’s. With each error, he smacks the base of his shoes with his racquet (Yonex) as if they’re clogged with clay (it’s a hardcourt). He’s partial to the fake curse word “shoot”—something I don’t have the discipline for despite the neighboring playground.
Her backhand is better, and it happens to look like mine: two-handed with a compact take-back, and timely, thank you very much. She’s sending some bangers crosscourt into his backhand, which can be credited for much of his chagrin. Were I him, I’d be laughing off my blunders through gritted teeth; thinly veiled heartbreak on full display, contemplating my devolution to pickleball. If I were her, I’d be chuffed to have an audience, no matter how small.
Two guys with backwards caps and a fondness for sweat-wicking technology. One tethers his phone to a selfie stick and slips it into the fence behind him, eager to ascend to new heights of self-awareness. The teasing stops here because both are pretty good—the tripodless guy deceptively so, landing forehands late and later, balls whipped up at the last minute in the manner of Nadal. I remove an AirPod to eavesdrop as the other says, “Nice shot, bro.” Everything is as it should be.
“Drop the racquet head,” calls a mother to her tweenage daughter after another ball kisses the net tape. “And body weight moving forward,” she adds. Mom is cheery, basket-feeding unfluctuating balls as if she might have non-family clientele. The daughter nods. I see her mind bending with all the disparate cues that must somehow converge in a single shot. A shot they can both be proud of.
She prepares comically early for her next forehand; a moon-mouthed toddler awaiting the aeroplane spoon. Spooning, as it were, best describes her racquet making a right angle with the court to scoop the next ball, before her extended arm garnishes it with a little topspin. Her slight frame very nearly gets some air, and her shot skims the baseline. Mom heartily approves and daughter grins. ‘This is an example of a healthy relationship,’ I think to myself.
A group of relative beginners playing doubles. They plod about, lobbing without purpose or concern for what it means to follow through. But they laugh; oh how they laugh. A mid-twenties guy in board shorts and a hoodie frames his serve, the sedate ball plopping scarcely over the net: the gentlest of aces. All four hoot uncontrollably and I control my urge to join in—with love—lest my illusory panopticon (a fence with holes in it) crumbles around me.
I leave bereft, but also with the thought that people should play doubles more. In New York, playing doubles affords you double the public court time; two hours instead of one. It also means you can get your socializing out of the way in the morning to make way for whatever deranged private activities you’re beholden to at night. Doubles can also, famously, rebrand our gaffes from a self-loathing shame spiral to ‘no big deal, mate.’ Triumphs won’t over-inflate your ego because the glory must be shared. More doubles might even help us shake the bratty, elitist reputation that has been foisted upon us, but probably not.
For now, I must keep picking things up and putting them down, thinking swole thoughts, inching my way back to the game that cracks me open and reassembles me—all before Wall Street opens. And if my adrenals take a hit on my homecoming? I’ll play doubles with anyone who’ll have me.
Is Tennis Etiquette… Real?
Welcome to Racquet’s inaugural dispatch of See You In Court, a regular column in which I, Melissa Kenny, a famously mediocre lifelong player, heed reader questions about tennis, be they desperate (Help! I’ve won a few matches moonballing and now I can’t stop!), desperate in a different way (Where are the hot young tennis players in my area?) or life-threatening (Is it just me or are all tennis shoes fugly?). What I’m trying to say is, AMA! Look out for prompts on Racquet’s Instagram, or make yourself known in my DMs.
First things first, though: a fodder-free tête-à-tête with myself on the topic of etiquette. Consider it some level-setting in the spirit of new beginnings. Etiquette is a good topic for narcs, you might be thinking. Not no, reader. Rule-following isn’t all that compelling. Wimbledon’s preservation of pomp and circumstance—a tightly wound hullabaloo of the whitest kind—is the least electrifying part of tennis. Until, of course, it’s met with defiance.
The pros
Seeing a pro abandon all formalities and unravel down to their most unvarnished, infantile form tickles the same part of my brain that longs for Jax Taylor to flip a table as Lisa Vanderpump purses her sinewy lips in disapproval. It affirms there’s a charade that we’re all playing in addition to the game at hand. That it’s de rigueur to never mirror your outsides to the blood that boils on your insides—though if you do, onlookers get the Schadenfreude-flavored dopamine hit they crave. Both indulgences are human.
Of all sports, ours produces the most satisfying transgressions simply because there is farther to fall. Once, for Serena Williams, the fall cost $82,500. After being foot-faulted during a match in 2009, she told the lineswoman, "I swear to God I'll fucking take the ball and shove it down your fucking throat". In 2018, peerless dummy-spitterr Nick Kyrgios jerked off a water bottle (to dribbling completion) during a straight-set loss to Marin Cilic. For the pantomime, his bank account was relieved of €15,000. YouTube is a deep reservoir of anthropology in its racquet-smashing compilation videos, though this is garden-variety stuff^ where code violations and fines are concerned.
Conversely? Some creativity can help you express your frustrations while skirting penalties. In 2012, after hitting a particularly demonstrative swinging forehand, Maria Sharapova shouted “Run, run!” at Agnieszka Radwanska knowing the ball was unreachable. Martina Hingis once tried to tweak Lindsay Davenport during a coin toss by saying, “Do you want me to hold first or break you?”. At the 2022 Australian Open, Daniil Medvedev warned the ump he was in grave danger of acting like “a small cat” if he failed to penalize Stefanos Tsitsipas for being coached by his dad courtside*.
Moving with grace is important in 2025; an age where self-interest is unwieldy and crying selfie videos exist. But pro tennis isn’t the stage for that. Pro tennis needs swagless players like Iga Swiatek and Carlos Alcaraz to clown someone just once to remind us that they’re alive.
This other banger, of course, attracted a code violation.
The plebs
At the plebian level—where you and I reside—poor etiquette is all of the above and more. Could be sleeping on returning a ball to your court neighbor, or the motion to replay a point because you “didn’t see” where your opponent’s ball landed (the answer is always “in”). But good behavior starts the moment you join the queue.
One morning last summer, around the hour of 8 o’clock, something I considered quite important revealed itself to be, in fact, closer in value to water or air: the early morning hit before work. It wasn’t forehand epiphanies or even the transcendental rush of endorphins that bore the discovery—but a silly squabble with someone in line.
With inboxes full, my friends and I had big dreams of hitting for 90 minutes before a day of working cross-functionally. Math led us here, since New York public courts allow one hour for singles and two for doubles.
The guy waiting courtside with his partner—no doubt also up to his ears in emails!—saw some holes in our logic. He and my mouthy friend descended into a verbal beef inspired by toy-snatching toddlers: feeble, circular, little sense made. Huffily, we at last left the court with the distinct feeling no-one had won because everyone was embarrassing.
I’ve run my mouth in the name of tennis before. But on this day, I let the brouhaha transpire without me—not because I’m not petty, bless you for considering that as an option—but because I'd realized my squabbling friend might’ve brought receipts from the wrong store.
A month or so later, I remember looking up between points to see my same friend and an unknown man move toward each other and embrace. I later learned it was his adversary from that morning—both had sheepishly apologized in unison; each had caught the other on an off day.
Let it be known, they fought doing what they love. But with distance from tennis, they realized what tennis can do: reduce you to a trashy, trifling sonofabitch. Maybe it’s a bit ugly, but at least it’s real.
*The umpire eventually penalized Tsitsipas, and coaching from the player box is now fair game. The entirety of Medvedev’s umpire tirade lasted “45 minutes” according to Business Insider, for which he enjoyed multiple fines and code violations. Likening the umpire to a small cat was well within his rights, though.
^I still have my yellow HEAD Titanium Ti S4 racquet—an icon—albeit very busted from my time as a petulant junior.