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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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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