10 Years of Tennis

[jimlosaltos]

Please forgive me as I stroll down nostalgia lane. More static but another fav.

Sun was setting over the edge of Stadium 1 in Indian Wells, thus the strings' shadow across Jannik's face.

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[jimlosaltos]

Here's a photo of Fed that I'm quite happy with. After so many images of his topspin forehand, his slice backhand, and his serve -- this reminds me that Fed added a squash shot or, as Fed called it, "the Spanish forehand" to his repertoire mid career. This defensive shot also highlights a perhaps overlooked aspect of his game, if that's possible with all the scrutiny Fed's received, but Peak Fed was among the fastest players on tours. (c)jfawcette at BNP Paribas Indian Wells.

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[jimlosaltos]

UPDATE DEC 10: With the migration of TPN to a new platform all the Tour Portraits by all contributors can now be found at this link.

The links below won't work, so check that page. I'm now at 122 Tour Portraits contributed to John's site. Hard to believe a casual discussion of his web site led to this long relationship.

Forum is being a bit funky, let's try pasting the top recent ones. Names are linked to Tour Portraits.
.

Number	Name
109	Jodie Anna Burrage - NEW
108	Iga Swiatek
107	ATP/WTA Backhand Grips
106	Alex Michelsen Serve
105	Rafa Farewell
104	WTA Forehand Grips
103	Marta Kostyuk
102	Jannik Sinner
101	Carolyn Wozniacki: Present and Past
100	Indian Wells: 14 Years of Women's Winners
99	Indian Wells: 14 Years of Men's Winners
98	Diana Shnaider
97	AI Tennis
96	Michael Mmoh
95	Fernando Verdasco
94	Hubert Hurkacz
93	The New Tournament at Stanford
92	Qinwen Zheng
91	Francis Tiafoe
90	Elena Rybakina
89	Daniil Medvedev
88	Jannik Sinner
87	Nikoloz Basilashvili
86	Cam Norrie
85	Camila Giorgi
84	Andrey Rublev
83	Ons Jabeur
82	Coco Gauff
81	Anastasia Potapova
80	Nick Kyrgios

[jimlosaltos]

Let's include this one of Carlos, since it focuses on his extreme flip and grip, fittingly for John's vision. From BNP Paribas Indian Wells.

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[jimlosaltos]

It was surprising to me. I'm reviewing the Tour Portraits archive and for the first time counted them - 109 Tour Portraits over 2,000 photos of top pros, and with a few early pauses in between, a decade of pro tennis photography. Made me pause.

I drifted into doing these for John Yandell and it become an avocation. Since you, his audience, are mainly focused on technique we tried to capture top pros' strokes. We had the Big 3, of course. And now the Big 2 of Jannik and Carlos. Over a dozen world number ones but also challengers. We also included some teenagers that became greats. There's 16 year old Naomi Osaka winning her first ever tour match, and doing that against a top 20 vet Samantha Stosur. And then 19 yo Quinwin Zheng, now the Olympic Gold Medalist in women's tennis. A teenage Carlos facing ebbing Rafa in a sandstorm was memorable.

There are some events that stand out in memory. Sabine Lisicki hitting a women's world record 131 MPH serve at Stanford made a sound so different, so loud I looked around. It sounded like a car backfired. And Andy Roddick at the late, lamented San Jose/ SAP Open hitting 150 MPH.

Many of these sets are more technical. I worked with John on doing several sets focusing on close ups of pros' grip variety. For one set, I measured the impact height of various pros serves. John said it "was like a whole feature article in pictures." From John, that was high praise.

As I'm digging through, I see some that might interest you, so I'll repost a few here, later.

I'll try to post a list with clickable links, in case you want to check any out. I hope this table pastes in the forum. Onward & thanks / jim



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