About Us
Val and J.D. began TennisInsideOut.com in 2012, encouraged by a Tennis.com writer and an international actor to create an entertainment and humor site devoted to seeing the fun side of the sport of tennis. (Who can say no to that level of cheering squad?) We strive to give tennis fans, both new and diehards, all the entertaining stuff we can find, like pretty pics, goofy lists, weird observations, elaborate fandom in-jokes, snarky commentary, and anything else our cray-cray-for-tennis brains come up with.
Check the sidebar for links to specific players included on the site, or click through the Recent Posts. You can also visit our Fan Favorites section for our most popular posts and some hidden gems.
Keep scrolling for all the info on our Tennis Inside Out founders and contributors, plus our photos, Twitter, and Instagram!
PHOTOGRAPHY
We try to enhance all of our content here at Tennis Inside Out with our own photography, so there are plenty of awesome player pics here for you to enjoy. Be sure to check out our black & white photography series, The Beauty of Tennis. This ongoing project celebrates the visual artistry of tennis players, mixing photography and poetry in search of ever-changing perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE!!!
Don’t miss out on a single post! Check out the upper right hand corner of the site to sign up. All we need is your email address, and you’ll get notified every time we put our brilliant minds to work on the site.
TENNIS INSIDE OUT on TWITTER:
If a three-time Slam champion and a hard-working Tennis Channel/ESPN/NFL commentator have time to read the utter nonsense we post @TennisInsideOut, surely you can find time to join 6,600+ much less important people and follow us! Keep up to date with the tennis tournaments, scores, and important stuff like making fun of people’s outfits and wonky forehands.
TENNIS INSIDE OUT on INSTAGRAM:
We recently launched on Instagram, and we hope you’ll FOLLOW US @TENNISINSIDEOUT!! Every week we post never-before-seen player photos from our collection — including some elegant black & white shots and some fun filter indulgences — plus cool Insta stories you may have missed from your favorite tennis stars. Also keep an eye out for live updates from Cincy, and feel free to follow the increasingly popular #shirtlessdomwednesday!
WHO WE ARE:
Valerie David Spencer is a freelance writer who specializes in Arts & Entertainment, most recently contributing featured pieces for Screenrant.com, CableTV.com, Yahoo! TV, Y! Celebrity, and Y! Movies. Her work has appeared on TVOvermind, CareerAddict.com, The Frisky, SFGate, IMDB, and a variety of other websites. Along with TennisInsideOut.com, she previously ran entertainment site TV News & Reviews (TNR).
Her tennis photos have appeared on Let’s Talk Tennis, Last Word on Sports, inadvertently on Blick (she’ll be happy to tell you that story if you ask), and on American player Ryan Harrison’s Twitter profile.
Valerie hosts The Night Session webcasts, which she began with Outside the Ball’s Courtney Massey. She’s also guest-posted at The Grandstand, and guested on podcasts for Tennis Atlantic, Realz Tenis Fanz, and Racquet Magazine founder Caitlin Thompson’s The Main Draw.
Valerie grew up playing tennis with her family, where games often consisted of 2-shot rallies that inevitably ended with the ball sailing over the fence into destinations unknown. There was no $75 million-a-year career in the works, but there was lots of fun and laughter, and so began her love of the sport.
When she’s not debating the flaws of the Penny Dreadful finale on Twitter or writing about the latest naked TV vampire, she’s arguing about the futility of the GOAT debate and tweeting about the latest near-naked tennis player (which is usually Fabio or Borna). She loves Swiss geniuses Stan and Fed, way too many crazy Frenchies, and cheers in an unseemly fashion for her Polish princesses Caro and Angie. She holds out hope for our players from #Merica, but is willing to adopt Canadian players as needed.
J.D. “Hot Coach” Spencer wears many hats at TIO, including CFO, Thought Leader, and Stats Expert. Funny story: As Val was editing this Petra Kvitova photo for Instagram, she zoomed in and instantly wondered whose totally hot coach was scoping out Petra’s practice with Katerina Siniakova. A second later she realized it was her own husband J.D., taking a moment between his reporting, photography, and social media duties at the Cincy Masters/Premier 5. And yes, he shall now forever be known as “Hot Coach.”
J.D. is as crazy about tennis as Val, proven by the fact that he’s been willing to risk death by a thousand Sharpie cuts by wading into throngs of fans at tournament practice courts and player’s entrances just to get those perfect, tweet-worthy pics we always hope will go viral. He has an askew view of the tennis world that demands to be shared, hence the formation of TennisInsideOut.com. When asked if he plays tennis, J.D.’s usual response is “I own a racquet.” His three favorite players are: “Fish, Federer, and Anyone That Plays Djokovic.” (Val will tell you he also has a fondness for Kerber, Kvitova, and Bencic.)
The Tennis Inside Out website is a constant work in progress, but was always meant to be a place to share Val and J.D.’s random observations about tennis that strike them funny. Hopefully you’ll find these observations as humorous as they do, and they’re guessing the blog will be even funnier once you’re done watching your 700th #Fedal Slam match that you got up at 2:30am to watch. Sleep-deprived and hopefully drunk readers, that’s their target audience.
CONTRIBUTORS
Stephanie Neppl owes her tennis obsession mainly to Monica Seles’ grunt and Andre Agassi’s irresistible mullet. She learned how to play technically-poor tennis on a small-town Iowa court as a kid and has played, in a very competitive manner, ever since.
Steph has a Master’s in Mass Communications and has covered tournaments for a number of websites, worked as a match logger for ESPN at the US Open, and previously worked for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association and Tennis Auckland.
She rambles about the ins and outs of tennis tournaments on her blog, I Have a Tennis Addiction. Steph also rambles on Twitter at @StephintheUS.
Courtney Massey is a writer who got her start in 2012 when she launched The Traveling Fan Girl, a blog that followed her adventures in tennis. Her lack of athletic ability but unwavering enthusiasm made her the perfect spectator. It wasn’t long before the tennis world took notice and her playful writing style and photography were featured on websites such as Tennis Atlantic, Tennis Alternative, and The Grandstand. Over the next two years, the Ohio native was credentialed at tournaments in Cincinnati, Montreal, and a Davis Cup tie in Latvia. And yes, that’s her in the photo, hanging with Czech player Tomas Berdych.
Courtney’s love for comedy and pop culture became center stage when she co-hosted The Night Session Webcast with Tennis Inside Out’s Valerie David. Their original approach and spicy humor became a cult like hit with one fan calling them the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler of tennis podcasts. Courtney had previously hosted a round table videocast from Tennis Atlantic and TennGrand.
Since 2015 Courtney works at Outside the Ball, a digital content channel and TV series on beINSports USA. There she is a writer, social media manager, and marketing coordinator. She earned her first TV writer’s credit in 2017, with her script for Outside the Ball’s season 2 episode 6. You can get in touch with Courtney on Twitter @CourtneyMania.
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