Guides

We at Racquet take our curatorial role to bring the best stories, ideas and experiences your way with extreme dedication. It's in this spirit, then, that we offer scenes and how-tos for making your visit to The Happy Slam, a, well, happy one. We sent our features editor Wendy Laird to Melbourne, where she met up with Australian photographer Chris Caporaso to capture scenes in and around the grounds. If this doesn't get you excited to visit the fourth Slam during Aussie Summer, we don't know what will.

The thing about archetypes is that—though they are of course shallow caricatures—they somehow tend to ring true. We hesitate to admit that this goes even for us fiercely independent, uncategorizable tennis aficionados. The fact is: We all know the following types, and we need to buy them presents. So we here at Racquet have amassed a guide to make your holiday gift-giving look effortlessly apropos and thoughtful. If this helps avert "tennis-scented candles" and other misguided purchases, so much the better. Happy Holidays from Racquet to you and yours.

On this, the first day of Summer, we’re proud to present our official Must Have list for 2024. We used to call this our annual Summer Gear Guide, but tennis these days requires so much more than gear, it requires that one adopt the tennis lifestyle. And if there’s one thing we at Racquet are going to do, it’s scour the Earth for the most important and stylish accessories, experiences and yes, gear, to empower yours.

As 2024 travel plans begin to coalesce—and, to be clear, this is in no way intended to make you stress out about not having 2024 travel plans yet—but maybe you should start thinking about it, you know?—we at Racquet want to make sure you include tennis in your calculations. To that end, we’ve asked contributors and some of our favorite rec players for their opinions on the best courts and how to make the most of them.

After seasons of using our annual gift guide to cheer on nascent attempts at cultural relevance (with indie tennis brands leading the way), the ethos of this year’s edit is a celebration of more being more! We’ve finally reached peak saturation of tennis across culture—and there’s something in here for everyone from the fitness girlies, the travels-with-racquet trailblazers, the deep-cut aficionados and the price insensitive. There’s also a selection of tried and tested Racquet collabs to make your favorite tennis tastemaker happiest around the holidays. Hope you enjoy this year’s selection, featuring some guest picks from Racquet fam.