Thursday, January 14, 2016

New Season's Resolutions

Happy 2016, y'all! We are 14 days into the New Year, but it's never too late to think up some New Year's Resolutions or, better yet, 2016 goals that one can strive to achieve during this revolution around the big, bright, reddish-yellow orb of which we are so dependent sun. I have a list of general goals I would like to achieve this year (e.g. read more books), but I also have a couple of tennis-related items that would make me a better fan this year and in the years to come:
Resolution: never miss the drama
(Daily Mail
| @WTAreactions)
  • Organize Twitter - I deeply apologize for invading your mentions with quizzical notifications about being added to some random list, but one of my goals for the past few years was to organize my timeline and I'm forcing myself to get around to it this year. Parsing out certain segments of Tennis Twitter is already realizing benefits: I can get the latest goings on of Novak Djokovic and enjoy the Nole love bubble on one list, see what the journos are reporting on another, and curate the fun tweets from my favorite Tweeters without having to sift through the TL hay to find those lovely needles. I also find myself on Twitter less now that I know I can always go back and find the important tweets that I may have missed.
  • Plan sleep - This is especially important this Australia swing for those of us in the States and Europe. FOMO is a major pandemic within the hardcore tennis fan community. With most tennis throughout the year playing outside of my timezone, I often find myself staying up until WTF o'clock in the morning or waking at ungodly hours to watch the matches I have circled on the Order of Play. None of this is good for my day-to-day life. Instead of getting involved in a marathon of matches, I need to pick my spots and understand that I'm just not gonna catch everything. Whatever I do miss, I can get a succinct recap by consulting one of my lists!
  • Watch more challengers/juniors - Since streams are available for the ATP Challenger Tour and certain USTA junior events, I have little excuses to ignore this echelon of the sport. I've been spoiled by high-quality tennis from some of my favs, so this may be a difficult one for me to follow through on. Still, it would be beneficial to keep track of the young or obsolete talents at the lower levels of the game just to say "I saw them first" when they breakout on the main stage of the tour.
What tennis resolutions do you have this year? Let me know with a comment or a tweet! Hope you're all ready for the Australian Open - should be crazy.



(p.s. Year of the Gentleman is still a tough album, so underrated.)