Oura is now the official wearable of the US Open and the USTA, in a five-year deal that stretches well beyond the tournament itself, into coaching certification and league play.

At Flushing Meadows, the brand will be hard to miss. Every main draw player will receive an Oura Ring, with recovery education built into player areas, alongside on-court signage, broadcast integrations, and fan-facing activations centered on sleep and recovery. It will also have a role in the US Open’s forthcoming Player Performance Center, including naming rights to a wellness and recovery space when the facility opens in 2027.

The timing is notable. Through partnerships with players like Aryna Sabalenka and Maria Sakkari, and a very public effort from its CEO Will Ahmed, Whoop is the brand that’s made wearables a conversation the sport couldn’t ignore this year after the Australian Open insisted on players removing them. It’s also built its business in other sports around league-level deals like this one, often in a more visible way than Oura, although that seems to be shifting—Oura became the official wearable of US Soccer last week.

Now, in a bit of a plot twist, the smart ring brand is the first to partner with a Grand Slam, landing one of the biggest accounts in tennis. It’s not a total knockout for Whoop though—if anything, it lays the foundation for them to follow suit at other events. And, in line with the recent news that Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open would allow wearables during matchplay on a trial basis, both devices will be permitted on court in New York.

Oura has been making quieter inroads into the sport, including with a formal partnership with the Professional Tennis Players Association last year that’s now come to a close. “This new USTA partnership brings that work to the sport’s biggest American stage and lets us build on what we started with PTPA players,” Doug Sweeny, chief marketing officer at Oura, told Hard Court.

All of this momentum was built on groundwork laid out at the tour level: the WTA partnered with Whoop in 2021, and the ATP followed by allowing wearables in 2024. As is often the case with tennis, the rollout has been uneven and—compared to other sports—slow, but wearables are now part of the modern game that tennis can’t ignore. What the USTA has done, smartly, is step in and help shape what that actually looks like at its most high-profile event.

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Rather than leaning into real-time performance data or pushing further into match play, Oura’s pitch centers on recovery, readiness, and long-term health. As the brand’s CEO Tom Hale put it in a release, “sleep and recovery are the invisible edge,” adding that the partnership is about bringing that idea to one of most impactful events in sport and helping players and fans understand “the connection between how they recover and how they perform.”

That approach may help explain why Oura landed the deal. While players are now largely allowed to wear these devices in matches, tennis hasn’t fully settled on how the data they generate during competition should be used, shared, or built into the sport’s broader commercial and content ecosystem. A recovery-focused product is easier to integrate without forcing that question. (The USTA tells me its too early to say if and how player data will be shared as part of its digital content.)

But it was also Oura’s broader, year-round commitment that was a key differentiator, according to a USTA spokesperson. Rather than focusing solely on the US Open, Oura positioned itself as a partner across its parent organization, from developing a recovery module for the USTA’s coaching certification to sponsoring its League National Championships and aligning around a shared focus on health and wellness at both the grassroots and professional levels. “This is a partnership that can have a demonstrative impact on the growth and vitality of our game for generations to come,” said the USTA’s chief commercial officer Kirsten Corio in the release.

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At the same time, Oura’s sights in tennis are not limited to this partnership. The company tells me it plans to sign individual player ambassadors as part of its push into the sport. “There’s an incredible generation of talent coming up in tennis, and we’re already in conversations with players who are leaning into recovery and smarter training,” said Sweeny.

Ultimately, the Australian Open drama helped force tennis to take wearables seriously just as two of the category’s biggest players were showing real interest in the sport. The result is a new kind of commercial lever that goes well beyond the two-week tournament window and pushes tennis to catch up with how other sports think about health, performance, and fan engagement.

Oura may have scored the first big deal, but you can bet Whoop is up next.

Thanks for reading! If you have tennis news or tips to share, email jessica@hard-court.com. For regular updates, follow Hard Court on Instagram.

In a normal, capitalist society, what Hailey Baptiste pulled off yesterday in Madrid would be a sponsor’s dream come true. Playing the best match of her career, she beat the world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka after saving six (!) match points—including an especially gutsy save with a serve-and-volley.

The story writes itself. Sabalenka is seen as inevitable in most of the matches she plays—it was only her second loss this year. Very few people (call them uncreative!) expected the world No. 32 to take her down.

But when she did, it acted as a reminder of the beauty of sports and tennis in particular (one I frankly needed after feeling a little bored lately). As photos of Baptiste celebrating took over my various feeds—some of them spliced against the artful shot of her breaking a racket in a match against Belinda Bencic just a few days prior—all the great copy potential started running through my head. I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to milk this moment.

As Matthew Futterman wrote immediately after the clock stopped in The Athletic, “Aryna Sabalenka finally lost a tennis match. Hailey Baptiste took it from her.” Boom.

But Nike, Baptiste’s in-kind sponsor, has done nothing with it and, even if they magically read this piece and feel inspired (Venmo me, please), it’s already too late. Other brands, from Asics to Wilson, celebrate lesser wins by their signed players on social media all the time—but Nike couldn’t spare an Instagram post?

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Yes, there’s the obvious wrinkle that Aryna Sabalenka is a Nike athlete too. So it’s not as simple as blasting out an upset post without thinking about the other side of it (i.e. Futterman’s sentence probably wouldn’t work).

But that hasn’t stopped them before—they celebrate fellow Nike athletes Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner beating each other all the time. You don’t have to frame it as Sabalenka losing, you can frame it as Hailey Baptiste playing the match of her life. Nike has more than enough experience threading that needle.

To me, the silence is representative of Nike’s disconnection not just from tennis but the spirit of sport in general.

The company is in the middle of a reset—new leadership, pressure on growth, trying to rebalance a business that, by its own admission, leaned too heavily on a handful of franchises and a very direct-to-consumer, digital-first strategy that started to feel a little insular. There’s been a lot of talk about getting back to sport, back to storytelling, back to the thing that made Nike feel like Nike in the first place.

But “getting back to sport” isn’t just about celebrating the GOATs. It’s about actually engaging with what’s happening on the ground, in real time, even when the people involved aren’t household names.

That used to be a central part of the Swoosh. “Find Your Greatness,” a campaign which ran during the London 2012 Olympics—which Nike didn’t even officially sponsor—wasn’t about the obvious stars or the guaranteed winners. It was about the belief that something meaningful could be happening anywhere, and that it was worth paying attention to even if it didn’t come with a clear outcome.

That’s the spirit of sport that seems decidedly absent from the brand today, and especially in moments like this that other brand partners would frankly kill to have the opportunity to play with.

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I’m not saying every upset needs to turn into a major campaign or that Baptiste is suddenly on some inevitable trajectory (though I certainly hope the Nike team will pay closer attention now). That’s not the point. What makes this kind of result interesting is what it represents—the idea that all the unglamorous work, the matches that garner less chatter, the weeks spent grinding without much to show for it, can suddenly crystallize into something real. It’s the kind of underdog story that fans (AKA the people who buy things) love because it’s universally resonant.

Very few people can relate to being the best in the world. But almost everyone understands what it feels like to put time into something without seeing the return you’d like, to question whether it’s going anywhere, to keep showing up anyway until something happens where it all seems to click.

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Those are the moments that give a sport texture and break up the monotony of a long season to remind you why you’re watching in the first place, as this one did. They’re also the easiest ones to engage with, because the story is already there. You don’t have to manufacture anything or stretch it into something bigger than it is. You just have to meet it where it is, while people still care.

Instead, it feels like Nike only really shows up these days once everything has already been decided for them—once the hierarchy is clear and a player fits neatly into a narrative that can be scaled and repeated and slotted into a larger plan. I get that that’s a safer way to operate when we’re talking big initiatives, but it shouldn’t preclude a little digital acknowledgment. Without it, the brand loses any sense that it’s tapped into the sport in real time.

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Tennis, more than most sports, needs that. The calendar is long, the same names show up deep in draws week after week, and it’s very easy for it all to start blending together. When something like this cuts through, even briefly, it’s an opening that brands usually jump on without needing to be told.

Nike has chosen to let it pass by just like any other result.

Thanks for reading! If you have tennis news or tips to share, email jessica@hard-court.com. For regular updates, follow Hard Court on Instagram.

Each topic gets a Court Index rating (Low, Medium, or High) based on how effectively it moves the needle. This is the core of what I do with Hard Court, so the full breakdown and ratings are for paid subscribers. If you already are one, thank you—it really makes this possible.

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I know many of you, like me, live in the center of the Venn diagram between Bravo and tennis fans, so this first installment with Shep Rose—an OG star of the reality show Southern Charm—should be a treat. I called up the reformed (or, shall we say, reforming?) Charleston bad boy to talk about his halcyon childhood in Hilton Head watching legends compete at the Family Circle Cup (now the Charleston Open), growing up with Stan Smith’s kids, how his castmates would fare as doubles partners, and what tennis rules he would change if he could.

Rose recently joined Intennse Tennis—a nascent, team-based pro tennis league—as an advisor and ambassador. With a faster pace than traditional tennis and its own set of rules, the Atlanta-based organization is kicking off its 2026 season in June with 10 teams, including The Outriders, of which Shep is part-owner. (Sloane Stephens also joined Intennse this week in a similar role). We dive into that and more, below.

So tell me how you first got into tennis—I hear it was a big part of your childhood and you were close with Stan Smith’s family?

Well, I grew up in Hilton Head, so lots and lots of tennis courts, especially where I grew up in Sea Pines. I was great friends with Ramsey Smith and the Smith family, [Grand Slam winner] Stan and his wife Margie. Ramsey was a classmate of mine, and he was very, very good. Perhaps he was responsible for curtailing my enthusiasm, or at least my acumen, in tennis [laughs]. My mom is also a gigantic tennis fan and she had a group that played twice a week. She would get us tickets to the Family Circle Cup and I have very fond memories of being like 12 or 13 and riding my little beach cruiser to go watch these world class tennis players.

I remember I went to go to one of my first tennis lessons and I kept hitting it over the fence. I thought it was like baseball. I thought you were trying to hit home runs. So I think my mom realized that precision wasn’t my key strength, more like insanity and frenetic movement. But I continued to play, especially with my cousins in the summer—we used to get into some major heated arguments on the court [laughs].

It’s funny, watching my nieces and nephews now, I’m reminded that there’s really not much to do as a child. I mean, you’re not an adult—you don’t have agency. So, what are you going to do? You’re going to go play sports with your friends. That’s so important. And the role that it played in my life is immeasurable. So to be involved with Intennse, which taps into that, is really cool.

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Yeah, what stood out to you about Intennse in particular?

The players at Intennse are young—typically in their twenties, maybe even younger—and this is their dream. This is the sport they’ve spent literally… 10,000 hours is a major underestimation, per the whole Malcolm Gladwell thing. They’ve been doing it their whole lives, and now they’re getting a chance outside of the ATP and WTA Tours, which is obviously a very competitive, worldwide situation. And, I imagine, it’s not too easy to make a living playing tennis unless you are in a certain echelon. So this is giving very good players a chance to make money at the thing that they love to do, and to break through, find inspiration, and essentially continue the dream.

The other part comes back to what I was saying about being a child. If you get a chance to have kids watch these very good players play tennis, maybe that’ll inspire them, because lord knows the U.S. needs more high ranking tennis players. We’ve been in a bit of a drought.

Oof, we’re definitely low on Slams at the moment. You’re right about it being hard making a living, even people within the top 100 can struggle because most of the money they’re making goes toward their teams and the travel costs.

Yeah, it’s a bit unfair, or maybe it’s not—maybe it’s the opposite of unfair. Tennis is the ultimate meritocracy, you know, sink or swim. Even in golf, if you’re a top 100 golfer, you’re likely making a couple million dollars, with sponsorships and things like that. So I think Intennse could be a way to get more money into tennis and bring in more eyeballs—who knows what the ripple effect will be. Now, I don’t think it’s Intennse’s goal to compete with the pro tour, but it’s another way of getting the sport out there.

Is there something about the team format that Intennse uses that you think unlocks something traditional tennis doesn’t?

I feel like tennis is the loneliest sport out there, because it’s just you. If things start going bad, there’s nowhere to run and hide. So I think it bolsters your confidence if you know you have teammates and I also think, for the fans, it’s more fun to root for an overall team.

The format is really cool because it’s so fast paced. You get one toss for one serve, and you have 10 seconds. And if you hit your serve and your opponent isn’t ready, that’s tough luck. They can’t be like, “Wait, give me a moment.” And if you win the point on your serve, you get the ball back and serve until you lose your serve. The other rule I like is that if you hit a clean winner, you get two points—if you win on an error or something, then you get one. So it rewards bold play as well.

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Ok, let’s get into some rapid-fire questions. Which tennis player, past or present, do you think would make for a great reality TV star?

Brad Gilbert, he’s a funny guy, or Vitas Gerulaitis. I’m trying to think of some colorful characters. Certainly not Ivan Lendl—he apparently never said a word. And obviously McEnroe is like the easiest choice, isn’t he?

I was such a big fan of Agassi. Everything about him—the long hair, that he thumbed his nose at the tennis authorities and the old guard, I was like, Yessss! So I read his book, it was very good, and he talked about meeting Brad Gilbert. That’s when he had a career resurgence, and Gilbert was such a character in that book, so I think he’d be a lot of fun.

Yeah, that’s a good call—he’s got quite a colorful Twitter presence these days. Ok, what’s one tennis rule you would change if you could?

“Quiet please.” I mean come on, this is a fast paced game, right? And then as a spectator, not being allowed to go to your seat until the changeover. I’m like, Come on, guys, this is ridiculous. You’re left standing in the aisle for 40 minutes—maybe less than that, I’m being dramatic, but still.

Haha, so you’re not a traditionalist, I take it. We’re at a moment in tennis right now where there are two camps kind of fighting about which direction the sport should go in.

You name something that comes off the top of your head.

I personally hate the addition of on court coaching, but lots of people believe that it’s great for the sport, and it probably is.

Yeah and it’s been going on clandestinely for all these years.

Exactly, but now it’s so overt, and I just can’t help but respect the players who don’t rely on it as much. I just feel like the beauty of tennis is that it’s a gladiatorial sport and it should be figured out on your own, one-versus-one.

Slightly off topic but I actually liked that tennis show, Break Point. I watched a few episodes and came away knowing a little bit more about the players and their personal lives. Some of them were likable, some not so much, and I enjoyed it.

You know it’s funny, I have some friends in the tennis world, and it’s like a big high school—everybody knows everybody’s business, who’s dating who, and what the back stories are, all the gossip, and there’s little cliques and stuff. It’s just funny to me.

Oh you’re completely spot on. I worked in fashion for 15 years, which I thought was a breeding ground for stunted antics, but when I entered tennis, I was like, Oh no, this is next level. Ok, next question, If you had to pick just one player out of the greats to watch for the rest of your life, who would it be?

Roger, duh! He’s the most beautiful player I think we’ve ever seen. It was just effortless and so elegant—he glided around the court. He won everything early, and then Rafa came around, and then shortly after that, Djokovic, so it’s not like it was all easy for him. He had his ups and downs, which makes him all that more interesting.

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Which of your Southern Charm castmates would be an ideal doubles partner and who would be the worst?

[laughs] I mean, me and Madison [LeCroy] would end up yelling at each other if we played some mixed doubles, I know that. Honestly, we’d all yell at each other. But Craig [Conover] and I have played tennis together, and he’s got a decent game on him, so I’m going to pick Craig.

Interesting. Which castmate is most likely to smash a racket?

I’m really trying to get past that... I’m 46 and I’m really trying to grow up. I mean I’ve broken rackets and golf clubs in the past, but not anymore. If you don’t practice a lot, you have no right to be that angry, and you’ve just got to remember that [laughs].

Do you think pickleball is ruining tennis or saving it?

Pickleball is a net positive for sure. Look, anything where people get out and get some exercise I support. Also, tennis is a very physical sport. My mom, who loves tennis, plays pickleball with my nieces now—she can’t run around the court anymore, those days are over. So anything with a racket and a ball that’s a little easier on you as you get older, I think is good.

Very diplomatic answer. Who would you rather hang out with—Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz?

Alcaraz, although I do like Sinner’s game. But I have some friends who know them and apparently Alcaraz is a whole hell of a lot of fun, whereas Sinner’s pretty chill. So it might be fun to hit the town with Alcaraz.

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Totally. Alcaraz is the one who’s like, I kind of want to go to Ibiza after this tournament, whereas Sinner is just absolutely married to the game.

I think Alcaraz is very much a ladies man, too.

So I’ve heard. Is there a player right now who you think is particularly overrated or underrated?

I mean, wins are wins. I grew up in the Andy Roddick age, and I feel bad for him, frankly—what poor timing. He won that one US Open. So I know this isn’t what you were asking, but I think he got the short end of the stick. He made it to a bunch of finals, and Federer was just there waiting for him. So you just wish that he had a more fruitful career in that sense.

Sadly all the American guys are having that same experience now with Carlos and Jannik, where it’s just kind of impossible to beat them.

Yeah, I like what Taylor Fritz is doing. I think he’s a very, very good player. It’s just crazy how there’s always these two to three guys who dominate—especially over five sets, like, good luck, because they’re going to come back. You can get hot and win a best of three match, but over time, it’s a war of attrition.

Ok, since I cover fashion, I have to ask you, what’s the most Shep Rose tennis outfit possible?

Loud like early Agassi. I remember I had all his stuff, where it looked like paint was splattered all over the shirts. That was me as a kid, trying to be offensive and a little out there. But these days, it’s just something that’s comfortable—hopefully a good pair of shoes so I don’t break my legs.

Fair. Ok, we touched on this a bit, but do you think tennis fans are too polite? Should they be more rambunctious?

Well, if you go to the US Open they’re not so polite because that’s a giant stadium. I went to Wimbledon two summers ago, and that was fascinating. I mean, they’re very polite there, and the arenas are very small. Ramsey [Smith] was nice enough to get me in. When you’re there your attitude is almost like, Ok, we’re here. Don’t screw up. It’s not a free for all, and there’s not like chanting and things of that nature, but that’s Wimbledon, just like The Masters, right? It’s just a different animal. I desperately want to go to the Australian Open and the French, so I will do that before it’s all said and done.

I was going to ask if you had a favorite major, but if you’ve only been to two, I don’t know if you can answer that.

Oh, man. Everyone’s going to say this is crazy, but I love watching the French. I just like the color of the clay and the very physical style. I remember when the Brazilian player Gustavo Kuerten won three titles in pretty rapid succession. I was watching a lot of tennis back then. For Federer, it was the one thing that he couldn’t win because of Nadal, and then he won one, and everyone was so relieved for him. I think that’s the hardest one to win, especially if you’re best on hard courts and grass.

Did you watch last year’s Roland Garros men’s final?

I did, that was insane.

So heartbreaking for Sinner, but amazing for Alcaraz.

I know, but I think Sinner’s gonna be just fine.

Yeah, I think he’ll be okay. I’m not worried about him.

I just don’t think they’re going to catch the Big 3—twenty to twenty-four majors is just crazy.

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It won’t be easy, but I think it’s possible. I’m curious to see who on tour, if anyone, will become a consistent threat for Sincaraz.

Ben Shelton’s got all the talent in the world. He’s just electric, but that sort of tells you how razor thin the margins are.

Generally speaking, you have to have your head completely in the right place—it’s not just about hitting the ball hard. Look at someone like [Nick] Kyrgios, where you’re extremely talented, world class, but not necessarily all there when it comes to the mental aspect of the game.

He’s his own worst enemy, for sure. Well, we’ve run out the clock, but is there anything you want to add as a final note on tennis?

No, I guess I do know a little bit about the game, so I’m glad we had this chat.

You definitely do. We never see you play on Southern Charm, so I didn’t realize you were into tennis until the Intennse news came out.

Well, it’s funny you say that. I was filmed last season playing with my friend Hannah, who played at Vanderbilt, and then I took her as my date to the finale [episode, where there was a big party]. And I said to the producers, “Guys, just show like a snippet of the tennis—it doesn’t have to dominate a whole segment.” But they just showed us talking about marriage and kids. I don’t know, don’t get me started. The show’s not just about me, apparently, which is just ridiculous [laughs].

So ridiculous! Well, hopefully you can squeeze in some tennis this season.

I want to, I want to.

Thanks for reading! If you have tennis news or tips to share, email jessica@hard-court.com. For regular updates, follow Hard Court on Instagram.

Bryson Malone is the rare stylish person who doesn’t want to overstate his fashion cred.

“I’m more like an anthropologist,” he told me as we dissected the differences between capital-F fashion and innate style. “When I’m at a tennis match, I’m looking at people in the stands to see what they’re wearing and how they’re interacting.”

What catches his eye? Not the influencers who spent hours getting ready, but the older tennis fans who dress “like they’re on a safari” or wear a clash of multicolored prints. “I love that so much,” he said.

That same impulse has driven his lifelong obsession with collecting vintage clothing—a hobby that’s now the foundation for his new business, Graphite, launching in May. The multifaceted company will sell curated collections of vintage tennis (or tennis-inspired) clothing that run the gamut from Ted Tinling dresses and Armani suits to small-town tennis tournament t-shirts whose design language Malone loves. It will also operate as a rental house for stylists and costume designers—where the rarest of pieces will live—and a creative agency helping tennis brands build more culturally relevant campaigns (sorely needed).

An art director and photographer for companies like Patagonia, Almine Rech, and Huckberry, Malone grew up on “the poor side” of Marin County, where he and his family mostly shopped at Goodwill and church thrift shops. “I grew up digging through things, and because Marin is generally a wealthy area, you’d find all these hand-me-downs from brands like Ralph [Lauren],” he said. “I had this weird window into a rich place, but as a total outsider.”

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His love of tennis followed a similar track. He grew up playing at a tennis club that he got free access to because his dad worked as a massage therapist there on the side of his work in the restaurant business. “I’ve taken like one private lesson in my whole life,” he laughed. Nevertheless, he got the bug, and still hits the public courts three times a week.

It wasn’t until the last decade that he began collecting tennis-specific pieces. “I was always collecting and watching tennis from afar, and it just wasn’t satisfying my love for the sport,” he said.

In 2022, he was doing a shoot in New York for a friend when he met the stylist Sam Herzog, who was starting Systemarosa—whose business model is similar to Graphite’s but focused on soccer apparel. “I told her, ‘That’s so sick, I’ve always wanted to do that with tennis,’ and she was like, ‘You should!’” Malone explained. But he had recently gone freelance after working full-time at Huckberry and was “massively broke,” so it didn’t seem realistic.

It lodged itself in the back of his mind, though, and when a big check from a client came through last year, he amped up his collecting. “I basically bought to the point where I had to do something about it—I forced my own hand,” he said, noting that he now has roughly 3,000 pieces in his archive.

Herzog was super supportive and even styled the brand’s launch imagery, a lookbook merging pieces from different eras and price points in the same way most of us get dressed. Malone also brought on Zander and Simon Abranowicz—the founders of the design studio Abbreviated Projects—as partners so that Graphite can offer the brands it plans to work with a full-service creative suite, from photo art direction to graphic design.

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While most of the collections it sells will be tightly themed, the first will be roughly 50 pieces that capture the breadth of the archive—suits, t-shirts, accessories, and tennis-themed home goods like fancy lighters and bookends. Future themes will include Smoking Section—with pieces from cigarette companies like Virginia Slims, Marlboro and Camel who have a long history in tennis; the Asia Edit, with tennis-inspired pieces from designers like Issey Miyake, Seiko watches, and memorabilia from the Asian Swing; a back-to-school American Prep collection; vintage suiting, and so on.

“I’m not trying to go mass, like get a bunch of customers and be a vintage reseller,” said Malone. “But these collections are a way for the non-creative class to buy into the brand and into tennis culture.”

Other vintage tennis apparel resellers like Vintage Court Collection, Frankie Collective, and Ace the Moon focus heavily on casual pieces from the ‘90s and early 2000s. While there’s certainly a market for that—and Malone has a ton of t-shirts from that era as well—it’s refreshing to have someone focused on the many decades of tennis style that came before Nike released its Challenge Court line.

“That’s not a part of tennis culture I want to ignore, but it’s oversaturated right now,” explained Malone.

The styling also stands out in a sea of cliche interpretations of tennis culture—lithe models in pleated skirts posing with wooden rackets, $200 sweatshirts emblazoned with fake tennis club emblems, or guys posing in front of luxury cars in Monte Carlo in sweatsuits. “It’s so costume-y,” he said.

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What’s far more interesting to Malone are the real, unfiltered folks who play tennis, like the 50-year-olds he hits with who smoke cigarettes in between games. People who play tennis because they love the game, not the scene bubbling up around it.

“The normal people of tennis are just so fucking wonderful,” he said. “They don’t have capital-S style, but they have a style, and that inspires me so much more.”

Graphite is in many ways an effort to remind people that tennis can be a source of inspiration in ways that transcend its country club associations. Although tennis participation and viewership have grown in recent years—and with that, brand activity—Malone believes interest from fashion and cultural communities is still lacking.

“Style is now inherent to sports like basketball, but tennis hasn’t really bred that,” he said. “I mean look at the ‘tunnel walks,’ that’s the worst thing to happen to tennis in a long time. How do you make Frances Tiafoe look bad?”

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Ultimately, the tennis tours can’t just manufacture cool. It has to come from the culture in and around the sport.

Malone points out that for a company like Graphite to succeed, he doesn’t need buy-in from the pro tours or their players. “That’s not a great sign, because if we don’t need you guys to be culturally relevant, you have no power,” he said.

By working with brands, however, Malone and his partners will have the opportunity to shape the modern language of tennis fashion and marketing in a way that could shift tennis’s cultural cachet in the right direction. That kind of reset feels long overdue.

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A giveaway for paid subscribers:

We’re teaming up with Graphite to give away a vintage Tiffany & Co. porcelain tennis ball keepsake box from the ’90s—perfect for stashing jewelry or matches.

To enter:

• You must be a paid subscriber

• You must be based in the U.S.

• Like and comment on this post

We’ll randomly select a winner and reach out directly to get your mailing address.

Thanks for reading! If you have tennis news or tips to share, email jessica@hard-court.com. For regular updates, follow Hard Court on Instagram.

Maria Sharapova has always had a better filter than many athletes when it comes to business. Even during her tennis career, Sharapova was selective with endorsements, treating them like extensions of a broader brand she was already building.

That same instinct has carried into her second act, where she’s built out a portfolio of investments and partnerships that reads as a tightly edited point of view rather than a collection of random bets. So when it was announced this week that she had invested in Amulet, a new women’s wellness company incubated by Squared Circles—the brand incubator co-founded by her partner, Alexander Gilkes—it felt like a continuation of something she’s been doing for a while now, just with slightly better access.

Because the throughline across Sharapova’s investing is how rarely it feels off. She was early to Supergoop!, back when SPF hadn’t quite crossed over into lifestyle yet, and the brand has since become one of the clearest winners in that category, with Blackstone acquiring a majority stake in 2021 in a deal reportedly north of $600 million.

The rest of her portfolio follows a similar logic, with companies like Therabody, Bala, and Tonal—brands that have raised serious money and, at one point, defined their categories—that all fall into that group of things you technically buy for function, but also because they look good in your apartment. And when she steps outside of that space, into something like the egg freezing platform Cofertility or the consumer investing app Public.com, it still feels intentional rather than reactive, which is not something you can say about a lot of athlete-led investing.

Sign up for a paid subscription to read more about how Sharapova operates and why she’s closer to some of these companies than most investors.

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When an illustrator sees her work show up on official tennis tournament merchandise without permission, it’s easy to treat it as a one-off—a bad actor, a sourcing mistake, an unfortunate oversight

But in tennis, it’s representative of a larger problem.

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When Yana Boyko realized her illustration of tennis rackets had been printed on Monte-Carlo Masters merchandise without her consent, she did what most creators do today: she posted about it. The tweet quickly began to circulate, drawing attention to the design and raising questions about how it ended up on official tournament merch in the first place. The merchandise itself is branded as being sold by the Monte-Carlo Country Club, where the event takes place, but it’s unclear who actually produced it.

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Late last year, Balenciaga quietly signed the rising French tennis star Arthur Fils as an ambassador, his team has now confirmed to Hard Court. At the time, no press release went out and neither Fils nor Balenciaga announced it publicly, though Fils began teasing the collaboration with breadcrumb imagery on Instagram, like photos of him wearing Balenciaga and a photo of Balenciaga bags stacked atop his hotel bed. He also showed up to Balenciaga’s S/S ‘26 show at Paris Fashion Week last fall while recovering from injury.

Luxury fashion brands are scooping up tennis players left and right, so the news itself isn’t surprising. And as one of the few men on the ATP Tour with an innate sense of style and swagger, Fils pairing with an edgier (these days) brand like Balenciaga tracks.

What’s more unusual is the overlap.

Unlike other players who partner with luxury houses—Jannik Sinner with Gucci, Carlos Alcaraz with Louis Vuitton—Fils’ kit sponsor, Lacoste, is also a premium brand with runway shows and a growing ready-to-wear business. Just a few weeks ago in Miami, Fils took part in a Lacoste shoot alongside fellow brand face Grigor Dimitrov, wearing pieces from the brand’s contemporary line rather than its on-court kits.

All of which raises a more complicated question: how does a player promote two fashion houses at once in a way that feels intentional, not conflicted—particularly when those brands couldn’t be more different on the aesthetic spectrum?

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At a certain point this season, I started noticing something I couldn’t unsee—a series of small, recurring moments that kept pulling focus away from the tennis itself.

Players tugging at their sleeves between points. Adjusting skirts mid-rally. At changeovers, even ripping at the sides of skirts just to be able to move. A ball slipping out of a pocket at exactly the wrong time. Shoelaces coming undone, not once, but multiple times in the same set. Pieces that looked fine walking on court starting to distort, ride up, or lose their shape as matches wore on.

It’s the kind of thing that fans—also known as consumers—immediately pick up on, dissecting clips on Reddit and Twitter in real time.

After speaking with multiple tennis apparel designers over the past year, one thing became clear—what reads as a minor annoyance on TV is often a very specific design problem, and one that can have real implications for how a player moves, competes, and even thinks on court. In short, the kit has become a main character, and not in the way anyone wants.

The details you’re not supposed to notice

There’s a version of tennis apparel that exists in campaign imagery—clean, styled, and relatively static—and then there’s the version that has to function in real time, in extreme heat, under pressure, while an athlete is serving, sliding, sprinting, and doing all of that repeatedly for hours.

The gap between those two realities comes down to details that are both incredibly technical and, when they’re done right, almost completely invisible.

“Honestly, one of my biggest pet peeves is watching players fiddle with their kit mid-match,” one apparel designer told me. “That’s the whole reason our role exists—to solve those problems so they don’t have to think about it at all.”

Take something as seemingly straightforward as a pocket, which has become one of the most quietly complex problems in tennis apparel.

“You’re solving for two things at once,” the designer said. “It has to be easy to get the ball in and out, but it also has to stay completely secure. If the shape or angle is even slightly off, the ball can move, and once it moves, that’s when you start seeing issues.”

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In practice, that means thinking through how a player’s hand enters the pocket, how the ball sits once it’s inside, and how it behaves while the player is in motion. Even something as small as a change in how a pocket bag is sewn—curved versus straight—can be the difference between everything working as intended and a ball slipping out mid-serve.

If you want to understand why this keeps happening—and how it actually impacts matches—sign up for a paid subscription.

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Each topic gets a Court Index rating—Low, Medium, or High—based on how effectively it moves the needle. This is the core of what I do with Hard Court, so the full breakdown and ratings are for paid subscribers. And if you already are one, thank you—it really makes this possible.

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At the Cincinnati Open last year, Danielle Collins reached a breaking point with her low back pain, one of many sources of physical strife for the player throughout her career. Down a set and 0-2 in the second set tiebreak, she began crying, shouting up to her team, “Why is this happening to me? I’ve literally played the whole match with this pain.” She wiped tears off her face in between rallies and, after losing, left the court without her stuff.

Commentators were confused and fans were vicious in their response. One wrote on Reddit, “Collins is an embarrassment to tennis. She is a nasty player and I do not have a heart filled to the max with compassion and empathy for her.” People lauded Taylor Townsend for picking up Collins’ stuff and handing it to her team but didn’t stop to wonder why she might be feeling so generous towards the woman who just had a so-called “outburst” across the net.

The scene was so familiar to me, as someone who’s experienced years of debilitating chronic pain. Whatever healthy separation there is between journalist and player dissolved into acute understanding, images of my own guttural breakdowns echoing hers.

When you live in pain, you cry louder, with more anger and outrage than anyone who’s never been in constant pain can possibly compute. The emotional strain of perpetual discomfort—of pain imposing limitations on you—frays all your edges, so you move through the world like someone whose system has been repeatedly shocked, never quite feeling settled.

In a sport defined by individual performance, even that private pain can become part of the spectacle.

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“I was in so much agony in that match and trying to power through, and I just started acting crazy,” Collins told me over the phone recently. “And then I got trolled online for ‘acting like a victim,’ because people who haven’t experienced this just can’t relate or empathize.”

Last December, Collins announced that she’d be taking time off from the tour to recover from the herniated disc in her low back that drove her to tears on court and to freeze her eggs. A diagnosis of endometriosis in 2021 came after years of severe cramping and the condition has affected her fertility, ultimately leading her to postpone retirement plans in 2024 when it became clear that having children would be a longer road. She also has rheumatoid arthritis, as well as another disc herniation that causes pain in her neck—compounding an already complex physical reality.

Taken together, she said, those diagnoses have made for a challenging career. At times, she said, that has meant showing up to tournaments feeling “not even at 20 percent” physically and competing anyway.

Collins is careful not to attribute every flashpoint in her career to physical distress. Still, she believes the strain she has competed through for years has shaped the circumstances under which some of her most scrutinized moments unfold.

“I’m doing a job where I’m dependent on my body, and then having to channel all this physical and mental energy into it—that’s hard, too, because when you’re going through chronic pain, it’s not just the physical stuff that you’re dealing with, it becomes so mental and it can be really isolating,” she explained. “I’m 32 years old, and I only know a handful of people who deal with chronic pain.”

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Continue reading with a paid subscription to Hard Court for the full story—including Collins on vulnerability, life off tour, when she’ll return to tennis, and how chronic pain has shaped her relationship with the sport.

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The topline numbers were fine enough, but the actual mood of the call was corrective. North America remains the problem child, with the company guiding for revenue there to be down 1% to 3% this year, while executives repeatedly returned to the same themes: too much markdown activity, not enough product newness, and a need to restore the brand’s full-price health. In other words, Lululemon is trying to claw its way back to feeling premium again.

That’s where tennis comes in. On the call, the BNP Paribas Open sponsorship wasn’t positioned as just a nice brand flourish. It was presented as early evidence that its…

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Courting, founded by longtime media partnerships executive Courtney Kelly, enters that crowded landscape with ambitions to balance performance credibility and lifestyle appeal while building early affinity with tennis’ next generation of consumers. The fashion influencer and reality television OG Whitney Port is collaborating with the brand on capsule collections, bringing design experience and a fashion-forward perspective aimed at the sport’s expanding cultural audience.

That partnership began taking shape a little over a year ago, after the two reconnected through a shared tennis coach. Port wa…

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Each topic gets a Court Index rating—Low, Medium, or High—based on how effectively it moves the needle for tennis culture and business.

Before we get into it, a quick subscription note: After a few requests, I’m now offering custom company subscriptions for groups of 10 people or more, with the discount dependent on group size. If you’re interested, shoot me a note at jessica@hard-court.com and I can share more info. As a reminder for everyone else, you can get 17% off group subscriptions of 2 people or more—tell your hitting partners, your tennis coach, or your mom who has incisive opinions about the tours (is that just mine?)

Keep reading for an analysis of the ATP Tour’s muted “tunnel walk” attempt, Uniqlo’s confusing rollout of the Emma Raducanu partnership, and Lululemon’s new benchmark for tournament sponsorship.

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Naomi Osaka doesn’t bow to the altar of tradition, and certainly not the misguided outrage that routinely comes her way. She reveres fashion and has an innate understanding of its power to transcend the insular world of tennis.

Tonight at Indian Wells, she’s picking up the torch she lit in Australia when she wore a couture look from designer Robert Wun over her jellyfish-inspired Nike kit to walk on court for her first match. Working closely with her longtime creative director Marty Harper and the New York jewelry designer Chris Habana, Osaka will walk on court wearing custom gold ear cuffs that were 3D-molded to wrap around her ear and hold her earbuds, as well as tribal-inspired gold jewelry that hooks onto her lip and nose. They’re the finishing touches atop a cheetah-print Nike dress with a black mesh back, matching jacket, and cheetah-print sneakers.

O…

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When Valentin Vacherot’s ranking shot from world No. 204 to No. 40 last fall, the shock wasn’t just that a player who had spent most of his career on the Challenger circuit suddenly won a Masters 1000—it was how improbable the path there felt, from beating Novak Djokovic to then facing his cousin Arthur Rinderknech in a final that instantly lodged itself in tennis lore. For a couple of weeks, the story took on that rare, almost cinematic quality the sport occasionally produces.

A few months later, when I caught up with him in Delray Beach, the atmosphere around him was quieter, though he was still stopped often for fan photos. He’d just lost a first-round match to Alex Michelsen and, despite his frustration on court, described it without drama or defensiveness.

“It wasn’t a bad match, it wasn’t a great match,” he said. “We were both serving well but he played better than me in the first set tiebreak and returned well in one of my service games, I didn’t. The difference was a few points.”

That framing—tennis as accumulation of small differences rather than narrative swings—has shaped much of how he’s processed everything since Shanghai, which from the outside looked life-altering and in some respects was, but in his telling translated mostly into a brief period of heightened attention back home in Monaco. During the offseason he found himself doing local media, visiting schools, fitting interviews and appearances around training in a way that hadn’t existed before, but for the most part his daily routine went unchanged.

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Keep reading for Vacherot on the months since Shanghai and the task of backing it up.

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There’s a certain kind of tennis player Richsport resonates with—not the traditionalist or the gear purist, but the one who’s always felt the sport could be more expressive than its equipment has historically allowed. Since launching in 2024, the accessories brand has built a following around the idea that racquets don’t have to sit inside tennis’s usual visual restraint. They can carry color, personality, and even cultural cues without losing performance credibility.

That perspective now extends into Richsport’s first collaboration with the racquet giant Head, a limited-edition drop that includes Head’s Tour tennis bag done up in Richsport’s signature orange with pink and yellow details, its Lynx Tour strings in bright orange, and a coordinating pink and orange dampener.

For co-founders Sarah Koudouzian and Nicole Dunn, the collaboration…

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For years, tennis influencers sat adjacent to the sport’s commercial core. They were visible at tournaments and valuable to brands, but structurally peripheral to the agencies and institutions that define the tennis business.

That boundary is starting to shift.

Over the past few months, WME Sports has signed three tennis creators—Ben Johnson, Madison Appel, and Livy Rothfeld—adding to a digital roster that also includes former D1 player Ayan Broomfield, who’s dating Frances Tiafoe. The signings formalize something agencies have been watching build quietly across the sport: tennis creators evolving from brand partners into scalable media businesses.

“We started to realize they were making a lot of money,” WME Sports partner and lead agent Tom Chapman told Hard Court. “But economics aside, they were creating really great, compelling content. They were highly engaged with their audience and they had more time than athletes to do that.”

That last point is central to how agencies now frame creator value. Elite players provide reach in spikes—matches, Slams, sponsorship moments. Creators operate continuously, capturing not just the tournaments they attend but their travel, fashion, and lifestyle habits, like daily tennis participation. For brands trying to reach recreational players and casual fans that continuity is increasingly attractive.

Chapman’s team had already seen the model work elsewhere inside WME. Golf creators like the Good Good collective, which the company represents, have built what he describes as a year-round, multi-million-dollar media business with its own staff and leadership structure. Tennis, he believes, has similar conditions: it’s a lifelong participation sport with expanding cultural relevance and a large amateur base.

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“Tennis and golf are those sports that everyone wants to play,” he said. “Whether you’re elite or a beginner. And they’ve become more culturally relevant… younger people are coming in. A lot of that is down to the creator economy around it.”

Thank the WAGs

The origin of tennis influencing, as Chapman describes it, is inseparable from the rise of WAG visibility at tournaments.

“A lot of our athletes were dating or married to people that were having a presence at major tennis events,” he said. “We started to see a trend of these people having more influence.”

Partners such as Paige Lorenze (also a WME client), Morgan Riddle, and Ayan Broomfield demonstrated that tournament life itself—the outfits, travel, hospitality, and behind-the-scenes access—could function as tennis media. They also proved the commercial case: brand partnerships, affiliate businesses, and direct-to-consumer launches built around tour proximity.

But WME’s newest signings suggest a second phase: creators whose authority comes not from access to players but from the sport itself.

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Broomfield, Rothfeld, and Appel all played college tennis, with Appel later building her following coaching in the Hamptons. Johnson, by contrast, is self-taught. What they share is fluency in the sport paired with content that emphasizes the style and culture around it. That range, Chapman said, gives creators credibility across tennis’s two most commercially potent environments: performance and lifestyle.

“If you’re a creator who can speak to what’s happening on court but also be in the stands looking great, then you have a foot in both camps,” he said.

For brands activating around tournaments, that dual positioning is particularly useful: someone who can explain the match and embody the event atmosphere at the same time. It also differentiates tennis creators from general lifestyle influencers entering the sport—a distinction Chapman believes will matter as the field expands.

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Keep reading for Chapman’s take on the limits of athlete-led content and why he believes creators could become tennis’s next commentators.

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A few days after losing the Dallas final, Taylor Fritz wasn’t replaying the match with anguish so much as giving it an audit. There was disappointment, yes, but mostly unemotional calibration.

“If I knew I had match points to win a title and lost, I’d expect to feel a lot worse,” he said in Delray Beach this week. “It hurt, but… I look back at the chances I had, and I feel like in the moment, without hindsight, I wouldn’t have played any of them much differently.”

What stuck with him wasn’t so much that tense window of opportunity but the loss of his most powerful weapon that came after.

“I’d say the bigger regret that I have is just not snapping back and playing a better service game,” he said. “If I just kept on par with the way I was serving for the whole tournament, then it could have been different.”

It’s a very Fritz way to process a match—not so much replaying the pain as sorting the variables. He’s always been especially comfortable talking about his tennis, without much defensiveness or hype. The assessments tend to be direct and unsentimental, whether he’s describing what worked or what didn’t.

That same clarity shows up in the way he competes. Fritz’s grit is well-known—the matches he hangs around in physically when many would retire, the Slam wins he pulls off when he’s two sets down—but when asked where that part of him comes from, he shrugs it off as his baseline setting.

“I’ve just always kind of been like that,” he said. “Maybe it’s something my dad instilled in me. I’m not sure. But it definitely comes from a young age. I just never liked to give up or quit—and when I have, I just hate that feeling.”

Even in Delray this week, playing with what he described as a couple pain points physically—a choice that’s drawn some outside critique—the decision to compete didn’t feel like much of a question.

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“For me, it’s nothing that’s really going to stop me from playing,” he said. “Especially when I live right here in Miami.”

If quitting isn’t really in his range, doubt doesn’t seem to be either.

“Self-belief and confidence has never been something I’ve had an issue with, for better or for worse,” he said with a laugh.

That’s likely why Fritz can be so matter-of-fact about his game. But it also stems from the other thing he’s known for: a granular analysis of tennis that has fans already hoping he’ll become a commentator one day.

Asked whether that self-awareness ever becomes problematic, he was quick to say yes.

“It can when I’m not playing my best,” he said. “There are times where I’m probably overthinking things too much, and those are typically the times that I’m not playing my best tennis.”

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Sign up for a paid subscription to read more from Fritz on his “empty-head” serve stretch in Dallas, what he did right after the loss, and how he sees his own overthinking.

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