Tennis
People who play tennis are a niche within a niche and if you know someone that plays tennis well enough to be buying them a present you’ll know that already. They care about their strings probably more than they should. They’ll happily play in the rain. They talk about their forehand like it might bite them back. Normally when shopping for people who have very specific interests the best gifts come from understanding those interests. Buying for a tennis player should be easy. Too easy. The internet will try and sell you socks, a ruck sack and shorts that all match with their name embroidered on the bottom. Don’t fall for it.
We built this collection after being frustrated time and time again by the same dull options being churned out every time we searched for tennis gifts. We figured we could do better. Everyone here has been carefully curated by people who play and love the game, not just follow it on the daily instagram dispatches from the french open. There is a difference between knowing what you like and understanding why you like it and we believe it shows. Someone who plays regularly has different needs than someone who chucks a mini kit together when the olympics come on. We’ve tried to account for all kinds of tennis players here without compromising on the things we actually love about the game.
When we say love, we mean function. We wanted gear that understands how seriously people who play tennis take their matches without being so intensely technical that it would confuse the heckles out of someone who likes to keep fit. We wanted stuff that works as much for the person who plays at the weekend at their local club sweating through their second serve as much as it does for the person who watches every slam religiously. Some of it you can keep using long after the holidays are over. Some of it is just for crying out loud because tennis is love.
There’s nothing here that felt like it was chucked together with a tennis ball printed on it and called it a day. We’re not sniffy but that bar really is low and we will spend all day banging it down some more if we have to. Everything that has made the cut into this little collection you’ll find has to earn its place by being something we would confidently give to one of our friends who plays. It’s tiny because we mean it to be.