About Tennis Magazine

Tennis Magazine

Tennis Magazine, styled TENNIS, was an American sports magazine devoted entirely to tennis, published in print from May 1965 to the November/December 2022 issue. Founded in Chicago by Asher Birnbaum, it grew from a regional racquet-sports title into the standard-bearing American publication for the game, following the professional tours, publishing ATP and WTA rankings, and mixing tournament reporting with instruction from champion players and coaches. Its print run lasted fifty-seven years.

The magazine ceased print publication in 2022 and continued through its website, Tennis.com. In 2026 the website's editorial operation was closed and the site pivoted to match scores and tournament information, ending the editorial lineage that had begun in Chicago in 1965.

Founding in Chicago in 1965

Tennis was established in May 1965, published out of Chicago with a regional focus. Its founder, editor and publisher was Asher Birnbaum of Skokie, Illinois. At launch it called itself the magazine of the racquet sports, sharing space with badminton and table tennis, and its local roots showed: the inaugural issue carried a piece on the Milwaukee junior scene and a tournament calendar for Central Indiana.

The ambition was national from the first page. The editors opened by lamenting that tennis remained a stepchild of the sports pages, doomed to occasional small-type recording of tournament scores, and said they could feel the early rumblings of an American tennis boom. Their stated goal, recalled when the print magazine closed, was to give the sport the undivided attention it did not get anywhere else. Long-serving writer Steve Tignor, marking the end in October 2022, noted that when the magazine was founded racquets were wood, balls and clothes were white, and Grand Slam champions were still amateurs who did not earn prize money for winning.

The 1970s Tennis Boom

The boom the founders predicted arrived in the 1970s, and the magazine expanded rapidly in scope and circulation with it. Covers featured the top stars of the open era and, reflecting tennis's new place in American popular culture, celebrities such as Johnny Carson and Farrah Fawcett. The magazine later recalled, and republished, its early interviews with rising players, including material on a young Jimmy Connors that foreshadowed a life in the sport.

Ownership in this era sat with the Golf Digest and Tennis Magazine grouping, from which the title was sold to The New York Times Company. Under large-company ownership it consolidated its position as the American game's magazine of record, the publication younger editors of later tennis titles remembered reading throughout the 1980s, when, as Racquet Magazine editor David Shaftel later put it, tennis was very much in the culture.

Content: Tours, Rankings and Instruction

The magazine's formula combined news and service. Alongside articles on recent events and active players, each issue carried the latest ATP and WTA rankings and brief summaries of upcoming tournaments, their participants and past winners. Preview and coverage of the major championships anchored the calendar.

Instruction was the other pillar, and it was delivered by champions. Chris Evert had her own regular opening feature, Chrissie's Page. Paul Annacone, a former coach of Pete Sampras, served as senior instruction editor, and Brad Gilbert, former coach of Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick, served as touring instruction editor. That structure — reporting by career tennis journalists, technique by tournament-level coaches and former champions — distinguished Tennis from general sports magazines that covered the game only at the majors.

Miller Publishing and the Champion Owners

Miller Publishing bought the magazine from The New York Times Company in 1997. In a distinctive arrangement, Miller brought retired champions in as part owners and contributors: first Chris Evert in 2000, who also served as publisher for a time, and then Pete Sampras in 2003. The personal involvement of two of the game's defining American champions continued a pattern visible since the 1970s, when stars such as Arthur Ashe took an active interest in the magazine.

The business model of the later print years depended heavily on organised tennis. In the early 2010s circulation stood at about 600,000 subscriptions — the audited figure for June 2012 was 601,090 — and the majority of those subscriptions were purchased by the United States Tennis Association for its members. The magazine published eight issues a year in its final format.

Tennis Media Company and Sinclair

In 2014 Jeff Williams, the publisher and a USTA board member, purchased a controlling interest in Tennis Media Company, the owner of the magazine and its website. In 2017 Sinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of Tennis Channel, acquired Tennis Media Company for eight million dollars, seeking synergies between the magazine, the website and the television network.

Under Sinclair the print magazine's senior team in its final run included long-established contributors Peter Bodo, Joel Drucker and Steve Tignor, all of whom continued writing for Tennis.com after print ended. Bodo's association was the longest: reporting in 2026 described him as having spent fifty years of his career with the publication, from magazine profiles of players to columns for the website, making him among the longest-tenured and most influential of American tennis writers.

The End of Print in 2022

In 2022 the magazine ended its print run after fifty-seven years. The November/December 2022 edition was the final print issue. Announcing the change, Tennis.com invited readers to move online and restated the founding commitment to give the sport undivided attention. Tignor's farewell account bookended the run: his first player interview for the magazine, four months after joining in late 1998, had been with a seventeen-year-old Roger Federer at Key Biscayne, who lost in the first round and said he hoped to make it on tour someday; twenty-four years later both Federer's playing career and the print magazine ended in the same season.

Tennis.com After Print

After print closed, Tennis.com continued to publish news, analysis and feature articles, including early tennis blogging ventures remembered by later coverage, such as Bodo's TennisWorld and the Concrete Network, which gave fans a forum for discussion. That editorial operation lasted until 2026. Its final online feature article was published on 8 June 2026, after the French Open, and the site then pivoted to reporting match scores and tournament information, with data-oriented pages on schedules, rankings, head-to-head records and live odds, directing readers seeking analysis to Tennis Channel. Writers including Bodo and Tignor departed, and an explanation on the site described the change as an evolution into a dedicated scores and tournament information destination.

Greatest-Players Series

Twice the magazine used anniversaries to rank the game's history. For its fortieth anniversary in 2005 it published a rating of the forty greatest players of the Tennis era, placing Pete Sampras first, followed by Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Chris Evert and Björn Borg, with Roger Federer, then mid-career, nineteenth and Serena Williams seventeenth. For the fiftieth anniversary of the Open Era in 2018 it published fifty greatest players, twenty-five men and twenty-five women, placing Federer first among the men and Serena Williams first among the women. The contrast between the two lists is itself a small history of the sport's changing hierarchy across the magazine's last two decades.

Legacy

When the website's editorial arm closed, Defector described Tennis as the standard-bearing publication about the game for decades, and its writers as having delivered accurate, poignant portraits of players to the public. The magazine's legacy rests on having been present, as a specialist title, for the entire arc of modern American tennis: founded before the Open Era began in 1968, expanded by the 1970s boom, sustained by the USTA membership model, and finally absorbed into a broadcast and digital group. No successor American print magazine has taken its place, which is why its closure in 2022, and the end of Tennis.com editorial in 2026, are treated by tennis journalists as the close of a continuous institution rather than the end of a single title.