I didn’t think I would have much time to watch tennis this fortnight, so for Roland Garros 2026, I have defaulted to the excellent online radio. Radio Roland Garros has always been a highlight and continues to be so. Great balance of tennis commentary, general chatter, pun games, and friendly banter, and this year plenty of talk about the weather.

After reading Sue’s memoir recently, I was intrigued by this follow up that centres on the hallowed tennis grounds of Wimbledon. It’s a bit of mish-mash of stuff, Sue’s memories, a history of the tennis tournament, and details of some of the biggest stars that have graced the courts, alongside more recent bios of players. The chapters do jump about all over the place a little bit, but equally, it’s such a joy to spend time in Sue’s mind like this, she has so much knowledge and insight, and it’s just a privilege to have it shared with us!

This was a really interesting memoir, detailing the life and times of a tennis player who doesn’t reach the heady heights of the superstar names you know and love, but puts in a real graft every day nevertheless. It’s always fascinating, if slightly uncomfortable, to think about that huge divide between the top players that can afford the help and support they need, versus the rather larger rest of the field who need to manage everything themselves, doing it on rather less prize money. This is a good, honest, revealing memoir, that is perhaps not surprising but does at least raise the subject once again.

As usual, I took some time off work this year over the Wimbledon fortnight to watch as much tennis as I possibly could. This time, I decided to shift the days a bit and focus more on the second week rather than the first… so typical that this was a year in which most of the top seeds went out super early and so I was left watching rather random people instead.

You always have to be a bit skeptical when a famous name writes their first novel, but I thought this was a really good one. Judy makes no bones about the fact that Anton du Beke basically talked her into it but you can’t fault the tennis story coming from someone who knows what they’re talking about! It’s all a bit predictable, but the characters are a joy and the journey is a lot of fun to go on - just like the actual Wimbledon tournament. Definitely worth a read if you’re a tennis fan. I see that Judy’s second book is a murder mystery… so we’ll see if that holds up as well!

Since Sky took the broadcast rights for WTA and refuse to put any decent replays up, I’ve not been watching as much tennis as I used to. It’s a shame, but it also means when I do get to subscribe to Discovery for a month to watch the French Open, it’s a real treat. Watching the players running around the orange clay courts whilst listening to Radio Roland Garros, what a fab way to spend two weeks.

Sue Barker is notoriously private so it’s great to hear from the horse’s mouth. I didn’t know much of her history, even knowing she was a tennis player, I hadn’t realised she’d won a grand slam. This follows her early tennis life, her journey to become the ultimate sports broadcaster, the real truth behind being badly treated by the BBC, and some thoughts on her private life and press intrusions. A lovely read.

I’ve been very intrigued by the news that came out recently of Iga Swiatek’s one-month tennis ban for failing anti-doping tests, the way this has been handled versus others. As a long-time Simona Halep fan it was frustrating to see her sitting in the sidelines for multiple years whilst the case was investigated, and it’s not been a barrel of laughs since she returned to the courts - what with such a lengthy spell without playing competitively and the almost immediate injuries.

This was so good, I really enjoyed it. The story is detailed and intricate but covers a huge period of time. It’s mostly set in the 90s and has that late 90s atmosphere perfectly. More than anything, though, it does a great job of explaining how tennis works (not an easy or sensible scoring system) and getting into the mental side of the game, when it’s going well and when it isn’t. I’m not sure it got everything 100% right but it was so well done, I really loved it.

I listened to the audiobook of this, read by the author herself, and it’s just a really good story of a family that worked hard and were eventually rewarded with success, and actually managed to deal with it pretty well! It’s amazing to hear the early days of Judy’s career, how she played and loved tennis, coached and loved tennis, but really didn’t have the support that is just starting to appear today. And I thought the story of Andy and Jamie’s careers was well told, respectful considering it’s their stories. Love it.

The second week of Wimbledon was somehow so much better than the first but also really quite frustrating. The singles action got really interesting and good, but it felt much harder to keep track of everything else. It was a really, really wet fortnight and it’s so impressive that the schedule didn’t slip very much considering there were a few days with basically no play. But the concertina effect did make it hard to find anything outside of the main show courts.

Although the UK is suffering from a lack of summer at the moment, the sporting events continue apace. Some are enjoying the football, if enjoying is the right word(?) but for me, it’s all about the tennis. Going into Wimbledon this year, the field seemed wide open and even more so when Sabalenka pulled out of the championships. My focus has been on the women’s side, as always, but it’s hard to avoid seeing what’s been going down on the men’s side of the draw too. But here are some thoughts from the first week, anyway:

Today it was announced that women’s tennis is returning to Queen’s club for the first time in more than 50 years, and whilst I can understand that this is an exciting announcement that brings together the two tennis tours at a high profile location, it feels disappointing to me. I’ve previously loved going to Edgbaston Priory Club to watch some tennis and now what was previously a 500 event (middle tier that can garner a few good stars) is now being bumped down to an ITF level event (not main tour).

Tennis has rolled into a new year and already we are into the first Grand Slam, with the Australian Open under way and as fascinating as ever. As a UK viewer, the last couple of weeks have been pretty disappointing, as Amazon dropped their coverage of the sport via their Prime streaming service and Sky have picked it up instead.

The US Open drew to a conclusion last week with a new champion on the women’s side and the same old champ on the men’s side. I wish I could say I watched and enjoyed it all but I didn’t… the only way I managed to keep up with it was to have a copy of the draws, and read the news and scores each day to keep track.

It’s Wimbledon time! Lush green grass courts, strawberries and cream, and one eye always watching the weather to see how much play is going to get completed each day. I can’t wait! Here are five things I’m looking forward to ahead of the 2023 tournament: Being on it. Have watched qualifying and kept an eye on that draw, as well as being ready with the draw and the order of play for Monday. Let’s do this! The battle for the top prize. Can Świątek do it? Is this Jabeur’s time? Will Sabalenka conquer her demons to get a Wimbledon win? I’m not sure this counts as looking forward to, but the Venus Williams versus Elina Svitolina first round match is must watch for me. I can’t believe the only non-Brit wildcards have to face off in the first round, and I want both of these to do well, dammit. Such a wide field, and so open, we could have a complete surprise on our hands like last year, or it could be one of the players who is on everyone’s predictions list. Dark horse and underdog story, anyone? Thanks to Break Point, I actually know a bit more about the men’s draw as well, I’m usually fully focused on the ladies but this time I might spare a minute to browse the men’s results too. There’s always a rumbling of political aspects within sport at the moment, but I’m hoping this will be a great fortnight of quality tennis to enjoy. Ready? Play!

Another successful two weeks of Roland Garros is complete, with our attention turning swiftly to the grass court season. However, there was plenty to enjoy on the clay courts of Paris, here are just a few notes I made as the fortnight unfolded: As always, loving Radio Roland Garros. They seemed to get a lot of heat about the balance between ball-by-ball commentary and general chatter, but I think they’ve got it right. I did learn why Hawkeye isn’t available at this tournament (the accuracy hasn’t fallen into the acceptable limits due to the constraints of the ’living’ surface) which makes the umpires popping out of their chairs understandable, if no less irritating. I always forget how much the crowd are almost an extra opponent for some of the players. Norrie had to take on the crowds two games in a row, facing popular French players across the net. It was also slightly baffling when good players would get booed - sometimes for not shaking hands, sometimes for arguing with the officials, sometimes even just for having the temerity to win! There seemed to be a lot of upsets on the women’s side, but it was fun to watch Muchova’s progress - her style of play is really engaging and a couple of her matches were really intense and a lot of fun to watch. Unfortunately she didn’t quite make it to the big trophy, but what a great tournament. I’ve also loved the return of Svitolina, who seems to have got back into the swing of things really quickly after maternity leave. I was worried the draw was a bit one-sided with Swiatek, Rybakina and Jabeur all in the top half, but it turned out the bottom half of the draw was much more interesting! And so we roll on to the lush green grass courts and it always looks so ‘right’ to see players taking to the grass. It’s a short season, so we have to make the most of it but hands up who can’t wait for Wimbledon?

When Netflix announced they were making a documentary series about tennis, similar to their work focused on Formula One in Drive to Survive, I was intrigued. I didn’t watch the motorsport one, having spent too much of my time already watching that sport, but people seemed to think it did a good job telling the stories behind the races, and even non-F1 fans were raving about it.

Two weeks of tennis drew to a close yesterday, with the Wimbledon 2022 tennis tournament crowning its final champion and then standing down to give the grass its well-earned rest. It wasn’t a simple fortnight, with plenty of discussion points and controversies, and a final day of tennis that included a fight for the men’s singles championship between two less-than-ideal candidates. I kept abreast of the men’s side of things only because I was listening, as I do every year, to the wonderful Wimbledon Radio Channel - a fantastically fun broadcast that covers everything going on every day with a rotating set of presenters, guests, experts and commentators. Otherwise, I would only have focused on the women’s game, which itself was full of intrigue.

I’ve seen it before and thought it really wasn’t going to stand the test of time but actually it was better than I remembered it being. It’s cheesy and pretty far-fetched but it’s a gentle funny rom-com that does the job. I also really like the time capsule of Wimbledon we see here - nearly twenty years ago, there were no roofs, no Hawkeye, the website was different, rain delays just meant sacking it off and going home. Amazing.

The wonderful Billie Jean King released her autobiography to much anticipation so I was keen to get in on the early wave and read it as quickly as possible. It’s wonderful, not only because of the exceptional things BJK has done and achieved in her life, the relentless pursuit of equality and the stand she takes against bullying and prejudice, but also because she doesn’t shy away from the fact she’s not done everything right. Facing headlong into the issues, addressing the facts, and understanding that nobody’s perfect, this is a wonderful read. Brilliant, tenacious, human.

How joyous for Wimbledon to be back on our screens! One week down and one to go, and what great tennis we’ve seen so far. I hadn’t particularly intended to write a post about this year’s championships, but then I remembered that it’s so-called Manic Monday, and it’s potentially the last one we will see. Going forward, Wimbledon will no longer have that sacred Middle Sunday off, instead they will play on through.

I listened to the audiobook of this, a while back, and realised for whatever reason, I never got around to reviewing it. So I quickly whipped through it again. It’s an interesting insight into the journey of a young girl who was conceived near the site of the Chernobyl reactor, to a five-times Grand Slam champion.

Tennis tournaments quite often gather their sports stars together to do small promotional stunts to promote the event. You know the kind of thing, holding koala bears in Australia, or visiting the Great Wall in China. The Rogers Cup in Canada has a different take on this - getting a selection of WTA players to try and guess which of four cups is proper maple syrup. This seems like a totally unfair challenge, partly because actual Canadians are taking part who must have an advantage, and also because they’ve got honey as one of the options and honey and maple syrup are pretty similar.

What a weekend of sport that was! I’ll admit my focus was pretty much exclusively on Wimbledon, but it was hard to miss the fact we were doing well in the cricket, and there were a handful of motorsport events to also catch the eye. But the tennis held me in thrall for the full weekend. I’m not a huge fan of the men’s game anymore, it’s too whippy and too long, but I couldn’t help getting invested in the Federer/Djokovic rematch. I’m sort of in the camp that thinks it’s a bit disappointing to end up with the same names in the finals all the time. Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, if it’s not one it’s the other. But you can’t take anything away from the fact that these guys are incredible, and that’s why they’ve managed to sustain such success.

Feeling a little the worse for wear from our weekend at two music concerts, we decided the ideal remedy was to head to the Edgbaston Priory Club for a spot of tennis. It’s the second year in a row we’ve attended the event, and was just as good this time round. There’s a nice relaxed feeling at Edgbaston, in fact when you walk in it feels more like a summer fete, with lots of kids with racquets running around and the smells of barbecue wafting in the air.

A couple of weeks ago, BTSport’s tennis coverage switched to the latest rounds of the Fed Cup - the self-styled World Cup of tennis wherein players team up according to their country and battle it out to win the tournament and be best across the globe. The British team were playing on British soil for the first time in several years, and were doing pretty well, so it was some constant and slightly one-sided broadcasts that we watched but even so, it was brilliant! I’ve not really paid this tournament any attention before but now I’m hooked!

One of the things that brightens an otherwise dull January is the return of tennis. Things in tennis-land go quiet in December, once the finals are all complete and players are taking a well-deserved rest. But the WTA swings back into action in January, and we are already saturated with coverage. Brisbane, Auckland, Shenzhen and some bonus Hopman Cup were all available on our screens this past week. With a year of the ups and downs of the tennis rollercoaster ahead, here are five things I’m looking forward to:

This is the sort of story that you’re aware of - man versus woman on the tennis court - but you don’t really know the details that went on behind the glitz and glamour of a show match. Of course there’s Hollywood sensationalism in places, but the stakes are true: women’s equality and the battle against an entrenched view that men’s tennis is just better, versus a reputation and livelihood that’s in danger of being gambled away completely.

For the past two weeks, the 2017 Wimbledon Championships have been underway, and they’ve provided lots of ups and downs, highlights and disappointments, the usual Grand Slam tournament soap opera. This year was different for me, though, because I was there on day one. I was one of those attendees in the grounds of the All-England Club. I never really thought I’d get to Wimbledon in person. It was a vague desire, but the complexity of getting tickets alongside the fact that coverage at home only ever gets more comprehensive and engaging meant I thought I’d be an armchair fan for the foreseeable future.

Usually when I watch sports, I am looking for a good game/match/race, and may have a favourite in the mix but as long as it’s a good battle or an impressive display, then I’m happy. Over the last six months or so, I’ve been investing myself into the WTA tournaments so that now I have a handful of favourites, for a variety of different reasons. Somehow, I’ve escaped without any of them meeting each other when it really matters, but now, on the second Tuesday of Wimbledon, the inevitable has happened.

We are rapidly heading towards the point of the year where Wimbledon takes over UK TV screens. Currently, the WTA and ATP tours are finishing up their stints on the orange clay, with the French Open still to come, but attention has already turned to the highlight of the grass court season (and arguably the entire tennis-related year). This year, there are no less than three women with everything to fight for heading into Wimbledon, and no Serena Williams to dominate, it couldn’t really be a more interesting battle all set to take place under the Centre Court roof.

This looks AMAZING. One of the bonuses of this film is that there’s a documentary about this subject too, which is on my documentary to-watch list that never gets looked at. If they could just go ahead and dramatise all of them, I’d be able to cross a lot more off that list!

If you’ve watched tennis for any extended period of time, particularly outside of the main grand slam events, then you might have seen the moments when coaches come on court to have a chat to the players mid-match. It only happens on the women’s tour, and isn’t at every event, nor does every player choose to do such a thing, so it can be a blink and you’ll miss it type of event.

Evolving sports to appeal to new generations of fans usually involves adapting to shorter attention spans, and that is something that can cause plenty of debate amongst the more traditional sport lovers. I’m in favour of making sport approachable wherever possible, but there’s likely room for all formats - long and short alike. Tennis is taking this approach, it seems, and I recently learnt about a new format. I’ve talked before about whether tennis needs to think about making all matches just three sets long but perhaps there’s another way. I’ve heard of Tie Break Tens, which is an end of season celebratory tie break tournament but today I learnt about the Fast4 format for the first time. It’s been the format for the Hopman Cup, where mixed double teams represent their country. In 2017, it was won by Team France but for me, the format was the most interesting thing about the tournament.

The 2016 Wimbledon Championships drew to a close this past weekend with Williams and Murray taking their respective crowns and bringing to an end two weeks of spectacular tennis. I’ve never felt quite so on top of all the Wimbledon action as I have this year, well not since I once took a whole week off to watch nothing but the tennis. There are two reasons why I’ve managed to stay so informed. One is the brilliant Live at Wimbledon radio, which provided all day every day coverage either of everything going on across the grounds, or more specific channels for Centre Court and Court One. The other weapon in my knowledge arsenal was the fantastic Tennis Podcast.

I enjoyed watching the first week of the French Open at Roland Garros, but the second week has been a bit of a washout. These days it always feels a bit weird for me to watch men’s tennis because we get to view so much of the WTA via BT Sport’s brilliant almost-constant coverage. Having seen a few men’s games this past seven days, I’m convinced that we’ve got the good end of the deal. When I was younger I used to prefer the men’s game because I knew more of the players, plus it was faster and more interesting to me. Now I’ve completely changed my opinion and prefer the women’s tour - and here’s five reasons why.

It was nearly seven years ago I wrote up some thoughts about Hawkeye, the super-accurate camera tracking system that allows line calls in tennis to be queried and corrected. At the time, I spoke of its benefits and pondered whether we would ever get to a stage where there are no linesmen at all, instead umpires would rely on Hawkeye to make all the decisions. This hasn’t happened, but more and more I’m starting to think it should. With the introduction of BT Sport came a wealth of WTA tennis into our lives. So much tennis has made me an armchair expert, and it’s come to the point where I really do wish it was down to Hawkeye to make the calls.

A year in the life of professional tennis tournaments, through the eyes of a journalist who follows the players around the globe. Taking in 2012, from the early beginnings in Australia, through the bigger and smaller tournaments, Andy Murray’s loss at Wimbledon and subsequent victory at the Olympics, as well as all the political shenanigans going on in the background.

When we signed up for BT Sport, I figured it would be one of those things that would be exciting for a week or so, and then eventually become a forgotten about channel – or in this case, set of channels. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We’ve watched endless hours of content from the telecommunications broadcaster, and although not all of it appeals (ultimate fighting is not my cup of tea, and the wrongly named Sportshub that only focuses on football just grates), I’d reckon we’re getting good value for money.

I read with interest this post about Maria Sharapova’s views on men playing three set matches. I’ve heard the arguments that women should play five-setters, to earn the equal prize money they were given a while back, but I hadn’t heard the flip side to that. At first, I couldn’t really see any reason for change, but actually reading her quotes, it makes a lot of sense. Sharapova’s main points were that it would make the matches more exciting, because every point really is crucial, and that it would ease the strain on men’s bodies, as some of these matches are now reaching the five hour and beyond mark.

With a trip to Brighton already on the cards, a need to add another sport to my Life List endeavour, and a timely reminder from the fabulous Lou, I found myself clutching tickets to the penultimate day of the Aegon International competition in Eastbourne. I made a slight error in entering the Devonshire Park grounds round the back, rather than the main entrance, which means when I was later in search of the ticket booths, I was too late to snap up any Centre Court tickets.

At the beginning of the month, when I was catching up with the Radio 5Live Wimbledon podcasts, I was intrigued by this snippet of conversation between John McEnroe and Pat Cash. McEnroe was hosting one of those 606 listener call in specials, but Cash had to share a sudden irritation of his that wasn’t in relation to any question in particular. Pat: Something that annoys me a little bit, people calling you former Wimbledon champion, or something. If you won the championship, they don’t take it away, do they? So, former Wimbledon champion is like taking it away from you. You’re always a Wimbledon champion. People say “you’re a former Wimbledon champion.” No, I’m a Wimbledon champion!

This is a piece I submitted for my journalism course. The brief was to write 250 words about a news item, in a general opinion piece style. The girl behind one of the UK’s most iconic images has revealed herself to the world… again. You may not have heard of Fiona Walker but you’ve likely seen the poster of her – walking away on a tennis court, skirt hitched up to reveal a cheeky glimpse of what lies beneath. Ms Walker has remained anonymous for 34 years, but as with most things, secrecy is not important anymore.

As a change of pace to all the football talk, here’s a post about Wimbledon! It seems it’s become an annual thing for me to summarise all the ways I’m trying to keep up with the best tennis tournament around. In 2008, I talked a little about the live commentaries, whilst in 2009 it was all podcasts and apps. This year, I’m going to do more of the same, as the list of ways and means keeps growing!

The Hawk-Eye technology to record a tennis ball’s movements and then review controversial line calls has been around for a while, and been included within the rules since 2006. The Wimbledon Championships are on right now, and we quite often see the players calling for a challenge on a call. Personally, I find the challenges a little bit disruptive. The player has to request it, we have to wait for the footage to be prepared, and then we have the audience “ooooh” as the result is displayed. However, this is much more preferable to relying on human eyes that can easily make a mistake. Some of those serves reach 150mph, literally blink and you’ll miss it. Having the option to question some of these decisions is a good idea.

This year, there are more ways than ever to keep up with what’s happening at the hallowed tennis grounds, and I am grateful because each year I get more and more scatterbrained. I extolled the virtues of the BBC’s coverage last year, and there’s more of the same going on for the next two weeks. From what I can tell, we can enjoy: The Wimbledon live blog, giving updates from all over the competition High profile live match updates - including video, and game by game commentary Tennis programmes on the iPlayer, including a couple of matches each day in their entirety, plus the usual Today at Wimbledon fare. Live radio and BBC Two streaming. Tarango & Cash’s Wimbledon Tennis podcast. That’s enough right there, if you ask me. However, the official Wimbledon site has some goodies on offer as well. There’s online video, the interactive draw plus some excellent live scoring.

The Beeb have announced the schedules for two Sporting events, both starting on the 6th March. The Davis Cup sees Britain take on the Ukraine in Scotland, with the tie shown on BBC2 at midday. On Saturday, coverage moves to BBC1 starting at 1pm, and back to BBC2 at midday on Sunday. Sue Barker is set to present, with Greg Rusedski, Andrew Castle and Jonathan Overend in the commentary box.

Wimbledon is always on at the same time every year, and yet this year, it completely slipped my mind. At one stage in my life, it was the sport I followed. Much easier than F1, as it only spanned two weeks of the year. I even created a massive wall chart to follow the progress of players throughout one of the championships. It was gaudy, but I liked it. This year I have very little time to consume anything tennis related, especially as it’s the same time as Silverstone testing and the British GP. I am incredibly jealous of the person I know who has taken the week off to revel in seven days of tennis-y goodness.

If I wanted to see this much sun, I would book a holiday to Spain. Well, first I would get myself a passport, but that is a trifling matter. It’s too hot. It’s too hot to write much. It’s too hot to post any pictures. It’s too hot to think up any more words, let alone 101 of them. It’s just too hot. In fact, the only thing it’s not too hot to do is sit in front of the television watching sweaty tennis players hit the ball between themselves, and dream about strawberries and cream. (Damn that Henman, why do we pin our hopes on him every time?)