Once you’ve registered for Tennis Round and created your free account, you can start to schedule tennis matches. The way it works now is still a bit manual. But while we’re working on making it smarter you might as well as set up a few matches. Here’s how:

sending a tennis invite

1) Create a free Tennis Round account and log in. You can register here

2) On the tennis players, page – find a player you want to invite and click the Invite player link.

3) Write a brief message with the best time and place for you

4) Click Send

The player you just invited will get an email and a message on his Messages page and you so will you:

Send tennis invitation shows in Messages page

Whether or not they respond to you is up to them though. There’s no magic here (well, at least not yet, we’re working on it). All members are real people with real schedules and other commitments. So, if the time you suggested doesn’t work for them, they might not bother replying at all. But many of them will! Many people just like to hit the ball and will always make time for tennis. So – do send out a few invites and see who else is up for it.

To prevent spam we’ve capped the maximum number of invites to 15 per day. If you invite 15 tennis players in one day and no one responds to you, it might be snowing outside or there’s something totally wrong with the site (in which case you should call us right away to complain).

We’ve recently added a new feature that automatically detects your geo location, so you don’t even have to type in your city in the search box. Just click the Find Local Players button.

tennisround.com Home Page

The site will show automatically you the closest tennis players near you and organize them by distance. Then you can sort the results by Skill Level and Gender and invite the players you want to play with.

tennis players in your city

You’ll notice the following helpful info:

1. City and State for which the search returned results

2. Distance (in miles) from the tennis player’s home court to your location

3. “View on map” link, which will show you exactly where on the map that player’s home court is

4. Map bubble indicating the player’s home court

5. Skill level of the tennis player (self ranked using the USNRP tennis ranking system as a guideline).

Launching Tennis Round just before the winter season has made me a student of the U.S. weather map. I’ve watched temperatures, showers, snow, winds and blizzards in what has been the longest winter for me. Ironically, the states where people can play outside right now (see map below), aren’t the most Internet savvy ones, well maybe except Austin, TX and Miami, FL.

So, 80% of the outdoor tennis courts in the U.S. are currently either wet, covered in snow or at near freezing temperatures. If you’re lucky enough to be in the south, you should have plenty of courts to pick from. For the rest of us – look for indoor tennis courts in our Courts tab.

The two maps below show today’s weather forecast and last week’s visitor traffic to Tennis Round.

Best States to Play Tennis in the Winter

Tennis Round Visitors Last Week

Nobody from Noth Dakota and South Dakota came to the site last week. They’re probably playing hockey instead.

I am happy to announce that we’ve finally enabled profile pictures! Tennis Round members can now safely upload their photo to their player profile.

If you’re signing up now, you can upload your pic during the registration process. If you’re already registered, you have to log in first, and the go to your profile page (click the My Profile link in the top right corner, under the blank white empty picture square) and click the “Upload image” link, that’s under the big blank picture space.

Tennis Player Profile Picture - Example

Your profile picture will save you from having to explain to other players how to recognize you, what you look like and what bag you’re carrying, and reassure other Tennis Round members that your profile is not made up by us. It might also increase the odds of getting more tennis invitations, since people normally want to know who they’re playing and if that person will bother to respond to their invite. I mean, who would you rather invite – someone with a profile picture or without one?

Here’s an example – I’m inviting my buddy Steve, although he can’t play. I’m just using him for illustration purposes as I’m sure he doesn’t read this blog.

Sending a tennis invite to another Tennis Round member

Obviously, I know what he looks like, so I don’t really need to see his picture. But for the other 99% of players, pics would help. In case you’re wondering what happens when you click the cute Send button – Steve will get an email, as well as a message on Tennis Round. So he wouldn’t have to log into Tennis Round all the time to check for new invitations or responses.

All of the Tennis Round player profiles are of real people. There’s no dummy data and names. Every player profile is created by a real person who has verified their email address manually and completed their registration. But there’s really only one way to demonstrate that – by adding your own profile picture right now. Go ahead, save yourself a thousand words and upload your picture.