GASQUET AND RACQUET

Astute readers may notice that there is no italicized note preceding this post, as there has been for the majority of my recent entries. There's a reason for that: this post is a Gasquet & Racquet exclusive. For those of you keeping track, the last time I wrote a post solely for [G/R] was back in January, when I pined for a Federer/Nadal final at the Australian Open. It would have been their maiden meeting at a hard court Grand Slam, but after they both lost their semifinal matches, I was denied this treat. Eight months later in Flushing Meadows, another possible asphalt encounter was derailed when Nadal lost his U.S. Open semifinal to Andy Murray. Am I perturbed? Slightly. But I'm confident that we’ll see a best-of-five clash on concrete between the two sometime soon. (Of course, they more than made up for these missteps with their midseason duel on grass.)

But let’s get back to why today’s entry is, for once, original. As many of you know, I’ve been labouring for a number of other tennis websites this year. The lion’s share of my work was done for TENNIS.com, but I’ve also written for NBCOlympics.com and USOpen.org. (I'd mention another tennis magazine's website that I wrote for, but they had their chance – and dropped the ball.) Because of these commitments (which I’m not complaining about), I’ve had practically no time to write exclusively for [G/R]. As far as problems go, this is a good one to have.

Writing for all these established sites has been quite an experience, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some nice people along the way. Besides the crack editorial staff at TENNIS, I've talked tennis with respected veterans like Jon Wertheim (Sports Illustrated), Bonnie Ford (ESPN.com), and Bud Collins (Boston Globe). I've even met two New York Rangers beat writers who I admire, Sam Weinman (The Journal News) and John Dellapina (Daily News). It’s nice to know that hockey writers like tennis too!

I can't say that I expected all this when I first started [G/R]. Back in the summer of 2005, I had just graduated college (from the famous SUNY Geneseo) and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to stay in the business world, try my hand at academia, or just find a job worth doing so I could keep a collegiate relationship going. Within days of starting my first full-time job at a national insurance company, I knew at least part of the answer: I definitely did not want to be working in insurance. I’m underlining that for all of you underwriters, customer service representatives, and claims adjusters reading this in your cube. Follow me towards the light…

After submitting piles of job applications to a domestic tennis association – all of which went unanswered – I decided that I needed a better sales pitch besides "I love to watch tennis and I know everything about the ATP Tour." That's when I started thinking about putting that knowledge to use in a website of my own. It was the first step in the journey that’s led me to where I am today.

(Ironically, I hated the proliferation of blogs back then – and I still despise the word “blog” today – but I quickly realized that creating a weblog was the only choice that I had. I didn’t want to pay a large sum of money to a website designer, especially since this was a trial-and-error run from the start, but I also had minimal publishing experience of my own. (My attempt to build [G/R] would have resulted in a poorly constructed html site via an out-of-date Dreamweaver, at best.) When I saw this very template on someone else's Blogger-hosted website, I liked it, signed up, and created my own.)

One of the things about Gasquet & Racquet that I'm most proud of is the site’s name. There are some crappy names of tennis websites out there (some bland, some over-the-top), probably because there are too many lazy webmasters guilty of pandering. So when "Top Spin Tennis" popped into my head, I quickly dismissed it and went with a name that I liked. Richard Gasquet was, and still is, one of my favourite tennis players to watch. His last name is also has the same suffix as tennis’ tool of the trade. I thought “Gasquet & Racquet” looked cool, and the site was born. (But contrary to popular belief, this was never intended to be a Richard Gasquet fan site, even though I devoted many posts to him, and I advertised the site on Gasquet's personal website. Regardless, I loved the name and still do today.)

Originally, I had planned for [G/R] to become the exclusive “haven” to discuss the ATP Tour. Little did I know, a) how difficult that would prove to be in practice, and, b) that there was an incredible site (which I didn’t visit regularly in 2006) that had me beat a long time ago. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, I suppose.

Blissfully ignorant, I did the best I could in the first year, posting at least twice a week and spreading [G/R] links guerrilla-style on tennis websites (shameful, but when you heckle over a $250 processing charge for an endorsement on a commercial insurance policy that’s valued at more than $100,000, you become desperate). But I enjoyed the tortoise-like progress I was making, up until mid-2006. That's when I lost, as I called it, "The longest set.” It was an unfamiliar and difficult time for me, and the site suffered because of it. [G/R] pretty much shutdown operations until the holiday season, and even when I started to write again, I had a difficult time constructing those final posts of the year.

The quality of my writing may have been the only thing worse than the site’s infrequent updates. It’s scary for me to reread some of these early posts, but I'm happy to say, years later, that I've definitely improved my prose. (Still, as crude as it is, I loved my post about my trip to the 2005 U.S. Open, where my tennis addiction started.)

As 2006 ended, I was stuck in the same dull job, made little progress towards a career in tennis, and was still miserable after a tough break-up. I definitely considered canning the site altogether, since it did take up a lot of my time. But doing this would have likely ended any chance I had of landing a job in tennis, which was the only industry that I wanted to work in.

I eventually decided to renew my [G/R] efforts, and kicked off 2007 with an important post titled, "Why I like tennis, part one." Getting to the core of why I love tennis so much was critical for me at this juncture. I slowly started to forget about my malaise, and focused more clearly on tennis and writing. When the calendar year changed from 2006 to 2007, a burden was lifted off me. (And as it does every January, the Australian Open helped reinvigorate my zeal.)

The year turned out to be unforgettable. As bad as 2006 was, 2007 made up for it. And I can honestly say that it all, in some way, originated from the work that I did on [G/R]. I covered my first professional tennis event (a Fed Cup semifinal in Vermont) midway through the year. After two years of attending the U.S. Open as a fan, I got to cover the 2007 tournament as a member of the media. (Read the U.S. Open Diary entries for all the crazy details.) I even got to write a weekly column for TENNIS.com. To celebrate, I planned on unveiling Gasquet & Racquet bumper stickers and t-shirts. Thankfully, those plans were shelved.

2008 would prove to be even more fruitful. With a year of tennis journalism experience under my belt, I was eager to make even bigger strides in ’08. A few months into the year, I gassed up the car and headed to North Carolina to cover the Davis Cup quarterfinals. Shortly after, I sold the car and boarded a train bound for New York City, as an internship at TENNIS magazine awaited. I've never been busier than I was this past summer: I covered AMS Toronto, the Olympic Tennis Event (full disclosure: from Connecticut), and last but not least, the U.S. Open. That is what I call, "The greatest road trip in sports."

Just a few days after the U.S. Open ended, I got word that I was going to be offered a full-time position at TENNIS magazine. When I heard this long-awaited news, I was shocked. But I’d been preparing for this for years, so I’m ready for the challenge.

I'm so proud to represent an extraordinary stable of writers, and feel honored to pen alongside them on TENNIS.com. I also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to three people at TENNIS in particular: James Martin, Kamakshi Tandon, and Pete Bodo. Without their help and guidance, I would not be in the fortunate position that I am at today.

So, does that explain why 99% of this year’s [G/R] posts have been lifted from other websites? (And why the site has essentially become a "best-of" Ed McGrogan?) Hope so.

But due to my impending TENNIS.com commitments, [G/R] will be neglected even more so. I simply don’t have enough time to keep the site going full-speed ahead, and that’s why Gasquet & Racquet’s three-year run is ending. It’s not fair to visitors who expect updates and commentary about the ATP Tour to have completely random updates at infrequent times. I will keep the site online for its archive (and to keep the domain name); who knows, maybe I’ll post a favorite piece of writing from time to time. But I strongly anticipate that this will be the last post on Gasquet & Racquet for a while.

I had a great time creating and building this website, especially when I was blissfully unaware of how difficult sports journalism really is. Whether it was waking up at 3:30 am to watch the Australian Open, taking a vacation day to watch Tennis Channel's all-day coverage of a Masters Series event, or experiencing what it's like to have a media credential for the first time, this was a lot of fun. And I hope to have just as much fun as TENNIS.com’s new, full-time web editor. Hopefully, writing for [G/R] helped prepare me for the even greater demands of TENNIS.com.

Thanks for reading,