Episode 310: Off the Court with Caitlin Thompson
Doree and Elise talk to Racquet Magazine founder Caitlin Thompson about the rise of tennis culture in the U.S., learning to reshape your identity when retiring from a sport, what success looks like for a brand centered on a niche physical media, and why your tennis racket probably doesn’t matter.
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Transcript
Doree: Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Frier.
Elise: And I'm Elise Hugh. And we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums and sunscreen. I bring up sunscreen because that's especially relevant today on this episode.
Doree: Yeah, it really
Elise: Is for us, but maybe not our
Doree: Guest. No, I was slightly shocked when she admitted that. And what we're referring to, you're going to just have to listen. You're going to just have to listen. Teaser. Teaser. What is your sunscreen of choice these days, Elise?
Elise: I use the beauty of Jos stick, the sunscreen
Doree: Stick.
Elise: I also use baby Bum because Baby Bum also has a great stick and my youngest
Doree: Daughter, my son uses that stick.
Elise: Yeah, Luna uses that stick because she reliably applies it and she does her raccoon eyes with it, and I always tell her to get the raccoon eyes area especially. And so sometimes I just put hers on.
Doree: Do your kids wear sunglasses?
Elise: No, I can't get them to wear sunglasses.
Doree: They wear hats. Yeah. Henry just recently started agreeably consistently wearing a hat, but I have noticed that he gets red right under his eyes and so I try to apply sunscreen right under his eyes, but I'm like, Ugh, if he just wore sunglasses, this would not be as much of an issue. But he won't wear sunglasses.
Elise: This morning we were driving to camp and the sun was right in Issa's eyes. Issa is my 9-year-old, and she was like, can I borrow some sunglasses? And I gave her my emergency backup sunglasses that were in my console and she put them on and she's like, oh my gosh, I look like a Karen. Wow. So I dunno if there's a Karen sunglasses look.
Doree: Wow.
Elise: So her objection to sunglasses is also aesthetic. So maybe if I got her some cool ones.
Doree: Do you think she was just going for the jugular?
Elise: Yeah. Yeah, she often does. She's sassy, man.
Doree: Have you ever seen that talker? Who? I think she lives in la. She's a mom probably our age or younger who has a daughter in middle school and she does a TikTok from the middle school pickup, carpool pickup line where she talks about, I
Elise: Think I have seen this
Doree: Middle school trends.
Elise: No, but I think that I could also do this. I feel like why did this?
Doree: This is where I'm this content, content idea pass me. This is where I'm going, this is where I'm going with this. I am curious what you are seeing among the middle school set right now that we might not be aware of as old
Elise: People. Well, there's a sale on Hollister swimsuits. There's a sale going on at Hollister for
Doree: Swimsuits. So tween still like Hollister
Elise: Or it's back?
Doree: It's back.
Elise: There was an era where Abercrombie and Fitch and Hollister really suffered reputational damage and somehow they've rebranded themselves as cool.
Doree: Wow. Good for them.
Elise: There were a lot of Hollister dresses at middle school graduations.
Doree: Really? This is so interesting.
Elise: I went to Cotton On with my daughter at the Century City Mall a week or two ago, and I did find a pair of linen drawstring pants that were so comfortable I started living in them. So every once in a while you go shopping with your tween and find something for yourself.
Doree: Ain't that the truth?
Elise: I love my linen drawstring pants.
Doree: I am wearing a pair of linen drawstring pants today that I got at Target.
Elise: Yeah, it's great for your all white uniform.
Doree: Yeah, my all white vibe. Your tennis whites.
Elise: Yeah, my linen pants are
Doree: White. Alright, Elise, let's introduce our guests because we had a lot to talk to her about.
Elise: We sure did. And speaking of tennis whites, yes, today we have Caitlin Thompson on, she's the CEO of Racket, which is a highly influential media company about tennis culture. She got her start at Paper Mag, the Washington Post and time before moving on to leadership roles at WNYC, which is the public radio station in New York and our podcast Home of Acast. And she did all this before founding racket in 2016, she played D one Tennis at Mizzou where she studied magazine journalism. And Caitlyn and I were actually both at Mizzou at the same time, but in different sequences of journalism and I wasn't playing any D one sports.
Doree: Me neither. And just want to remind everyone, you can visit our website forever 35 podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We have an Instagram at Forever 35 podcast. You can join our patreon at patreon.com/forever three five. We're doing casual chats, we're doing monthly book and pop culture roundups. We're doing ad free episodes. There's just a lot happening over there. So much fun stuff, so much happening. Our newsletters at Forever three five podcast.com/newsletter and you can call or text us at (781) 591-0390 and email us at Forever three five Podcast at gmail. And now here's Calin
Elise: Calin, Caitlin Thompson. Welcome.
Caitlin: Thank you so much for having me. It's nice to see you guys.
Doree: We're so excited to chat. As you may know, we both play tennis, so this is especially exciting. Get to talk to you.
Elise: I'm doing air quotes. Oh, come on. You play tennis, you play tennis. I don't hit the ball every once in a while. My brother is the good tennis player, but yes, I do it recreationally. So do I.
Caitlin: Wasn't I if anything more here for the recreational band of tennis players than ever before? Than I ever have been before. I love recreational tennis players and I want to encourage everyone regardless of where they're on their tennis journey. Truly. Thanks
Elise: Calin. Thank you.
Caitlin: It's also true tennis has done such a bad job in my lifetime of making people feel like they can step into it and are welcome in it. And one of the things that I philosophically feel like to my core not only is the proprietor of a tennis media company but also is a human, is like, hey, if you make people feel like the door is visible and it's open, turns out that is effective as an audience growth strategy. And also there's more of them than there are people who are experts. And so it's business, but it's also like I'll take all, come on everybody. The water's fine. Totally. I also married a beginner, so I kind of have to have that attitude just to be completely transparent. So I couldn't ever be a tennis snob.
Doree: We do usually start by asking our guests about a self-care practice, but I want to table that for one second because you said you married a beginner and I'd love for our audience to hear, for us to hear just a little bit about your personal tennis journey. Were you a junior champion? What is your tennis story?
Caitlin: It was really something I got into very early and very young and I had a very early example of being extremely good at something and being extremely dedicated to it in the form of both my parents. So I have an extremely musical family. My parents are both performing classical musicians and they are unconventional, they're arty, they're free wheeling and free spirited and well traveled and sort of at times questionably present parents, but they're both genius musicians and they were really, really dedicated to their craft. And it was something I grew up watching when I was a kid. I grew up mostly in Montreal and they were in the Montreal Symphony. And so daily practice and obviously a dedication to the artistic life, but just incrementalism was kind of there as an object lesson for me probably fortunately for all of us, I was reft of any musical talent whatsoever.
Elise: Did they say this to you or did you realize it at some point?
Caitlin: It was obvious to all of us and I think it was a little bit heartbreaking for them, but I think it was the best thing that ever happened to any of us because my brother and sister who are both younger who do have some musical talent, really got the full parent experience. Whereas I found sports first skiing because I grew up in Montreal and that's how all there was to do. And then my parents would go on these long tours every summer with the symphony where they would travel to Asia and they would travel to Europe and they'd be on the road for quite a long time. And I got shipped off to my grandma's house and my grandmother was so cool. She had taken up recreational tennis on the public high school courts as a retiree. She made all of her own outfits. She was a working class nurse but had glommed onto the glamor of tennis and made all these cool outfits.
And she would get up every morning. She was so cool and I would just do whatever she did, which was go to her book club and go to Smitty's, the grocery store and I would play tennis with her every morning. So my fondest memories of tennis are not actually competing, although I did go on to be a junior champion, as you said, Doree, I'm going to use that word even though it's a little bit nuts. I went on to no be play in a lot of junior tournaments and I won a good amount of them. And then I got a tennis scholarship actually to college. But really what I think of as my origin story and my relationship to the sport is that joyous sort of summertime time I spent with this cool lady who was just the most fun person that I knew. And I think a lot about what's happened with women's sports especially. It's just like, oh, if you show it on tv, turns out people really like it and people feel like they can become a fan of the WNBA or become a fan of
Doree: Women's
Caitlin: Soccer. So it really is just a missed opportunity that people haven't been doing this the whole time. And I'm really glad because when I started rack so many years ago, a lot of it was this was not conventional wisdom. This was like, oh, why would you bother talking about recreational tennis or two recreational tennis players? Or why would you try even to have a larger conversation? The most obvious interesting thing is the pro athletes and that's kind of like, have you talked to them? Because not all of them are very interesting. And moreover, talking to them about being good at tennis is about the most boring thing you can talk to them about because most of them are so good they can't even explain it. So for me it was like, oh, I'd much rather talk to somebody who's just starting or struggling or has a fraught relationship with it because it's more interesting and also there's someplace for them to go,
Elise: Alright, let's back up and make sure that we capture what you're doing for self-care these days. However you define self-care for yourself.
Caitlin: What I do is I play tennis as much as I possibly can. I really try to sweat a lot and I do pushups and sit-ups every day and then I try to obsessively track my sleep. I have been a obsessive exercise and recovery devotee for the past decade really. And I care the most about sleeping. Sleeping is my selfcare. How are
Elise: You tracking your sleep?
Caitlin: I have a wearable device that basically runs my life. It runs my life, which is not to say that I don't do things that are adverse to sleeping. I still have some cocktails. Sometimes I'll still look at a screen in bed, all the things that are proven to not be great for sleep hygiene. But my wearable basically emphasized for me that even if I technically am in bed for a number of hours, it doesn't mean I'm actually getting a quality good night of sleep, which means that my muscles and my body and my brain are all going to be pretty below average. And to be clear, I wear a wearable that professional athletes wear. They use it in a good scientific, actually useful optimizing way. I'm basically using it to justify not drinking and a 9:00 PM bedroom. And now I wake up the earliest of everyone in my household and I wish I didn't and I feel just unoptimized at any time of the day, but I'm the first up in fact and usually wide awake before anyone else has had their morning coffee.
I'm really excited to see when I have a tween and teen. I have a 10-year-old son and when his sleep patterns change and he turns from being a morning person like her to a night owl, I presume we'll see if I turn back into a night owl. I don't know. But I basically like many parents just feel like I'm always behind the eight ball as underoptimized as possible, which is why all of this gobbledygook about recovery and the devices that I use after I play tennis, like my massage gun, my stem, which is an electric stimulation, pads that I use.
Elise: Those are cool. I've gotten that done at pt. Yeah, I don't know if it works or anything, but it feels cool
Caitlin: Then that's something that's not nothing. I would buy a home cupping kit if it would be allowed where I could just do all my, I'm so fully immersed in this stuff, whether it matters or not or works or not that I feel like this is really, you've hit upon a subject. I don't care about skincare, but I care about recovery and my body care wellness. And I'll say this, my body wellness when I was about 35 or so, so almost 10 years ago, I got a pretty serious back injury and I'd been going to a physio for a long time and it was tennis related. I've been going to a physio and he was like, well kid, you got lucky, but you really got to take care of yourself. I did a lot of acupuncture, I did a whole lot of stuff that people in their forties really start doing and a lot of my friends made fun of me. They were like, what are you getting a massage at a spa every week? And I was like, no, I'm getting preventive physio care so that I'm not injured further. And then guess who asked me for ofput physio. As soon as everyone turned 40 they were like, Hey, can I get this lady? I was like, see.
Doree: So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back. Caitlin, how much tennis are you playing in a typical week?
Caitlin: I could play every day if I had the time. I'm mostly playing two or three times a week and I try to bike everywhere. But in my dream world, we will have racket HQ at a tennis club and I'll just take calls courtside and maybe in this dream scenario I won't even have a phone. I'll just have an assistant who tells me what my presence
Elise: Somewhere so
Caitlin: Good. But until that day comes, I'm trying to play two or three times a day, two times a week. New York is quite difficult a week, A week two, two or three times a week.
Elise: Doree, how much tennis are you playing now that you're heading your league?
Doree: Kind of same because I've been dealing with tennis elbow. I'm trying not to play more than three times a week because it starts to be a little much. And also depends if I'm playing singles or double, I try to just kind of moderate, but it's hard because I like to play. Sure. So
Caitlin: Are you on a
Doree: I'm on A-U-S-T-A team and I'm also doing flex singles this summer and at my level, somehow 20 people signed up. So Caitlin, your cause didn't rally to your Cause they didn't divide us into flights or anything. They were like, okay, go ahead, play 19 matches. So I'm constantly trying to schedule singles matches.
Caitlin: How are you doing in the league? Are you
Doree: Around? I'm currently at the top of the league just on precipice. Okay. I've only played five matches, but I am four in one, so not bad. Hey, not
Elise: Bad. Just
Doree: I have a couple matches coming up this week. I mean I'm a two five Caitlin, we're not talking about Wimbledon here. I'm going to come out there, get out
Caitlin: There. I think that's great. I would love to see some live footage of these matches. I assume
Doree: They're
Caitlin: Streamed on the tennis channel. Patreon? Yeah, the tennis channel plus plus is the women's 2.5.
Elise: This is what I always said about I wish there was CSPAN five and six
Doree: Tennis channel two five.
Caitlin: I have infinity appetite for recreational tennis play. Honestly, just the sound of tennis is being hit. I thought relaxing. Yes. That is very satisfy. Sometimes I just put it on in the background
Doree: To take my blood pressure. I never played singles before until this league and my first match. I was like, oh, I thought I was in shape, but I was in shape for doubles.
Caitlin: I actually applaud you for playing singles at all. I will not play singles. I only play because of the level and
Doree: It is a different game. We were kind of curious, as someone who is so immersed in all aspects of tennis, you hear all this talk about how tennis had this huge boom during the pandemic. All these people took up tennis, myself included. What is the current status of tennis? And we can talk about pickleball later, but what is the current popularity of tennis? How prevalent is it in the us? Do you have a sense of that? Is it growing?
Caitlin: Yes. There's been an uptick in recreational play and we work with a lot of the major racket brands like Yex and Wilson and Bobot and others. And they tell us like, oh well we've never sold recreational sort of starter rackets at a higher click. But the thing that I find really interesting is, and this is sort of where we really sit as a media company and what I find really interesting, which is searches for the tennis polo jumped 400% in the last two years, year on year, which just people looking for tennis fashion. There was a discreet sette that said in the month following the release of challengers, obviously starting Zendaya and churros, there was a 245% increase in the Google search term adult tennis lessons.
Elise: Oh, I thought you were going to say churros.
Caitlin: There's stuff, I mean I think probably a lot of people had questions about churros also. And I think those collectively kind of ladder up to this larger conclusion that I was always optimistic about but wasn't sure how it was going to take shape, which is, it's more about being in the culture
Because once something is in the culture then it, the stats might fluctuate a little bit, but it's part of the collective imagination. It's part of the style, it's part of the storytelling. We had a couple of signals, obviously films. Netflix did a big series on some of the tennis players that are more personality driven. Great point. So for us as a media company that's been more interesting to watch as opposed to people beginning their tennis journey or maybe rediscovering it or dusting off their rackets that have been in the closet. That's more of an encouraging sign than the amount of people who sign up for USDA leaks. Not to say that that's not great too, it's just more, it's going to take a couple of different expressions and I like that they're all happening simultaneously.
Elise: Well, you bring up a really interesting point in racket and its role in trying to be part of the culture or change culture and that's things like, I was really delighted, for example, when I was at the V store, Claire v, the handbags and that designer who's from la, I was at the CLA V store a couple of years ago and saw the racket, CLA v collaboration. And so how important was it to you to sort of, in thinking about strategy and thinking about getting the conversation about tennis and its relevance and its coolness out there again, how important was it for you to think about other ways that people, other cultural outlets and other ways to overlap and get tennis in the conversation?
Caitlin: Very deliberate,
Very important. And I think you're right to call it out these, I think for us media is what it is, which is a constantly sort of contracting and rapidly expanding and then rapidly contracting cyclical business. And I think when I saw what kind of cultural merchants like David Chang was doing with Lucky Peach and what Tyler Brule did with Monocle and is still doing with Monocle, what Kinfolk was doing for Mason jars and tea lights was sort of allowing a whole ecosystem to exist so people could feel like they were a part of it. And a big part of that ecosystem was figuring out beyond a beautiful tangible print product, which is where Racket started, as did these other brands beyond a podcast or digital content or anything that anybody who's worked in media for the last 10 or 15 or 20 years as we all have has familiarity with that stuff always cycles through the CPMs change, but stories are stories and people want them and there's always a little bit of lag in terms of how we get them to pay for it, and that's always kind of the case. But I think for us, knowing that there were case studies that we could look to in other parts of media, obviously in the case of Mama Fuku, lucky Peach was sort of a brand builder for the brick and mortar restaurants, but also the forthcoming food line. And
Elise: That was a great magazine.
Caitlin: Obviously it shuttered at a certain point, but it was a great magazine and it was great writing and it sort of proved it doesn't really matter what your mass reaches. If you do something that's specific and has a specific flavor, then more people feel directly spoken to. And even if people feel glancingly spoken to, they'll kind of jump in your world. Out of curiosity, it felt like the true aspirational thing to offer people was a really all, all-encompassing world. Any of us who grew up with Lisa Frank,
Elise: This
Caitlin: Knows what it feels like to be spoken to with a whole world. And I wasn't like a rainbow and unicorn and sticker kid, but I knew what that world was and if I ever wanted to step into it, I knew how. And I think of what racket does as a very similar, not similar from the outside, but in terms of the construction and the container, very similar. My favorite thing that we do obviously is still the thing that you and I went to school for, which is long form journalism and storytelling, but we can bring those tools and those muscles to the entirety of the ecosystem to the benefit of all of those things by treating them as just various doorways to offer people to step into.
Doree: Cool. In the last few years there's been this kind of movement to these new print products being essentially collector's items with relatively small circulation, high price. And my husband collects guitars and he subscribes to a magazine called Fretboard Journal, which is like, you've probably never heard of it, but it's very niche and very expensive, but I can imagine what it's exactly and he has all the issues lined up. And I was wondering if you could just talk about that from a media industry perspective. Is growth something you think about? Seems like this racket is never going to be a million circulation magazine, but what are your thoughts in that realm?
Caitlin: One of the features and bugs of having a little bit of an entrepreneurial disposition is that you're constantly looking around and being like, well, this idea that I have is obvious and everyone's obviously going to understand it and why aren't we here yet? And how could this possibly be taking so long? So that's sort of both a blessing and a curse that when I realized that that was my disposition, and despite working in a lot of newsrooms and a lot of big legacy media companies, I was the person who'd be on the innovation team. I would be the person who was doing the piloting of things and then I realized, oh, this is a pattern for me and this is actually something I should lean into. And it's not without its difficulties because obviously
Elise: Innovator's Dilemma
Caitlin: Generally has innovator's dilemma for sure. And also media generally has been a pretty hostile place, especially the smaller you are. That said, when I left, I worked at the Washington Post, I left the Washington Post, I worked the Time magazine. I left Time Magazine, I worked in public radio at WNYC, our public radio station here in New York. And every time a lot of my colleagues who were among of course the smartest, most interesting, most well-educated, awesome people that I could imagine, I really had a lot of comradery with. A lot of the folks that I worked in, all these newsrooms, a lot of them were like, this is crazy, what are you doing? And part of me was like, well, I kind of have to do this and this is just kind of obviously part of my DNA and I'll minimize risk by doing other stuff with consulting or projects or until I felt like their solid ground being my feet.
But also more to your question about media Doree, I felt like it was just so obvious to me that a great contraction was inevitable with the way that mass media basically has disappeared within our lifetime. And combining that with venture capital, you don't really need to go to business school to understand that venture capital wants media to scale because they want scale, not because media is built to scale. And actually any media that has been scaled is good. I think if anything, the collapse of the venture backed media in the last five years have not made me more pessimistic, but they've kind of just been obvious like, oh, these guys took venture. It was the wrong fit. Venture doesn't really work in media and anybody who's incentivized to juice the numbers is not serving an audience and it's going to be a matter of time, even if they can even get the audience in the first place, which I look at a company like the Messenger, which did last a year despite raising what, $20 million.
They never even had an audience. buzzfeed had one, they just didn't sell out when they should have to Disney candidly. So for me, part of it is just like, oh, if you look at the macro trend here, I could stay at time and wait to be laid off as everyone it would've happened ended up staying totally. Or I could sort of try to do an intrepid thing based on this thing that I knew I had subject matter expertise in. And as long as we could sort of stay nimble with the business model, we could figure out a way to build a brand. If there's one thing that actually scales, I think it's brand. So our journalism is always going to be expensive. It's always going to be labor intensive. It's always going to require that we spend more to get more. So if I want that incredible writer, if I want to get the best photographers, if I want to print more issues and get them to more people, that is inevitably going to be more spend.
And that's okay, that's a good problem. But I think brand scales, but media doesn't. And as long as you're comfortable ping ponging between those two things, then it's very clear what your goals should be and then you start looking for the scale and the success outside of the media component. So for me, success in media looks like changing the culture inside and outside the sport, which I think we've done successfully. We have pushed and held to account a number of people in the sport and pushed our agenda in a couple of different ways that I'm happy to enumerate. But we've also I think made it more friendly and certainly more in dialogue with culture. Everything is so balkanized that it's really more like can you own your whole ecosystem and can you do it while kind of having the interplay between scale? And if you can do that and make the numbers work, then you're at least able to stay alive if not also grow.
Elise: You have talked about how you see tennis as a container for interesting, larger social discussions like wealth inequality and elitism and inclusion of women and people of color. Say more about that and how tennis might be a useful lens or why you think tennis is a useful lens to explore some of these ideas.
Caitlin: Awesome. I'm so glad you referenced that because it's something that I kept saying so often that eventually people started believing me and then quoting it back to me and it made me feel like, oh, it's been, maybe it was true and also I certainly believed it, but also maybe it's been a little bit, I think tennis generally has been on the right side of history more than it hasn't. It was a real pioneer in terms of equal rights, equal, equal pay for women. It's still not there, but it was the first organized professional women's league starting in 1973 with Billie Jean King and the original nine. And it was really our first example of giant female athletes, superstars that were on a global stage on a regular basis. The color barrier was broken earlier in tennis than almost any other sport. And tennis really became the breaking ground for inclusion about LGBT and emphasis on the T because some of the first trans athletes famously were tennis players thinking of course, of Renee Richards.
So for me, it's been proving itself as a larger container than just wins and losses for a really long time. And I love the fact that now all of these other sports are embracing a lot of lessons and opportunities the way that tennis has kind of provided, not an infallible playbook, but one that was kind of ahead of the game. And I'm really happy to see that because the stories are richer for sure. And I think the stories being richer really is the motivation here. I worked in all these other newsrooms that we've been talking about largely as a political journalist and what struck me as being, I like telling this story about when I realized what political journalism was because I realized it quite early and it was starting to basically bifurcate in the mid two thousands when I was in the Washington Post newsroom. And on one side of me was Dana Priest, who was a feature writer, won a Pulitzer Prize for covering Walter Reed Medical Center and their treatment of veterans got Congress to pass a bill, changing the way we treat our veterans. And pretty much some of you would study at Mizzou or another journalism school,
Elise: Investigative deep dive,
Caitlin: The best in class investigative, societally impactful role of media like fourth estate staff. This is a woman who spent six months FOIAing everything and just came out with this massive societally changing body of work and one pulitz for it. On my other side, Chris, who was guy and write newsletters and did he do any reporting? I maybe, but I didn't much perfectly pontificating on literally who was winning. And the day I found really instructive in the sense that our political conversation really, I'm generalizing, but really started getting boiled down to winners and losers. We talked about politics. It was a sport that was never why I wanted to talk about politics. I thought I could talk about society. I thought we could talk about, like you said, at least inequality, globalism, inclusivity, conflict, global affairs, all the things that I'm sneaking into racket's agenda by enriching what could be otherwise kind of normal profiles of athletes or communities all of a sudden take on a really deep meaning.
If you look at it through the lens of like, oh, this is a sport that allows us to travel high and low far and wide and is inclusive of players of all ages, genders, and races and religions. It feels like it goes down easy because it's just more interesting to me than like, oh, Yannick sinners on a winning streak. He's won 37 matches in a row. Can he win 38? I don't know, Danny, we'll find out really soon. And the answer is one of two things. I dunno, that's not interesting to me, although I like watching it, but for everybody else, we have to bring something else to the table. We want to be the people talking about stuff that matters. And I think that's how you get an audience, but also that's how you make impact.
Elise: Okay. Let's take a break and we'll be right back. I want to save the last question for Doree. So before we get to it, I just want to return to something you said about your parents and just excellence and being sort of incubated with excellence and incubated with excellence. Yes. The name of my autobiography, it's yours. I've just given it to you for free.
Caitlin: Thank you.
Elise: This whole idea of when you are really good at something, whether it's sports or dance or music, and it becomes such a big part of your identity. I'm thinking about this with regard to leaving tennis or leaving some of the activities that we're so foundational to who people are. I'm curious what you've observed or insight that you have about finding meaning from these things that you excel at and you have a true passion for, and then what happens when you have to leave it or athletes have to leave it when it gave their lives so much purpose?
Caitlin: It's a great question. I think for me, the meaning it provides especially for or people who otherwise feel like maybe they could use a little bit of extra societal support or feedback or identity. There's that stat that is so commonly cited about women who play high school and not even college sports, just high school sports being so over indexed in Fortune 500 and in Congress. It's like 90% of people who are in those positions played sports at a somewhat serious level. So I think part of that is just fundamentally true because it's true and it's not true of sports alone. You mentioned dance or arts or performance. There is a really amazing thing that performing musically, artistically, athletically, shares, which is just you're putting yourself on the line, you're making yourself vulnerable, you're in the present moment and you're losing and winning in a way that's like low stakes life or death.
You learn how to win with grace, you learn how to lose with integrity and you learn how to mess up. And I heard my dad crack a note in the branded bird concerto in front of the Ahan Symphony, and he had to still play the rest of the piece. It's not like he could just quit and throw trumpet down and storm off the stage. The stakes are real when you put yourself out there and there is something really beautiful, but also really, I think there's some wisdom and some beauty to be found in this idea that you're trying hard and it's not even whether you achieve or not, but I think beyond identity, it was useful for me because I didn't really understand that I was that intelligent until I got to college. So for me, going to a sort of cliquey high school in the suburbs of Atlanta, it was useful to be like, okay, well, I'm a jock so I can have this identity, I can excel at it, I can find a commonality with the people.
That was a little bit of a lingua franca, and I was like a young queer kid growing up in the south for a time after we moved from Montreal. That was meaningful to me. So I think part of it is external identity, but also part of it's just how you develop as a human when you're constantly putting yourself on the line. And what does that give you as a way to take away, I love working with athletes because they can take it on the chin and figure it out and keep going because they've lost a lot in their lives and they still dry. And so part of it is that, and I think the other part that's really both personal but also interesting for me from the exterior is that when I quit playing college tennis, my last match was at the Big 12 Conference championships in 2002 in College Station, Texas. And I was so over it that I left my rackets, my bag, my shoes on the court. I never wanted to see another tennis racket again. I felt really torn between journalism school and being an athlete. The two were not
Elise: Compatible,
Caitlin: Cooperative or coherent. I always felt like I was mediating between divorced parents who didn't want to allow me to function, but I had to because that's the only way I could afford to go to college. And so I was over it, but then I formed a completely new relationship with it, which was much more about this joyousness of my youth. And I think when you step out of an identity, yes, it's really jarring. And I'm seeing friends of mine who have played tennis at a much higher level than I ever achieved really grapple with, how do you retire from this when it's been your entire identity? And you have to make a new relationship to it. And that's hard. Relationships are hard whether they're with people or with your own identity or with a sport or all the above. And so I'm not saying that there's a totally cohesive or common experience.
I've seen a lot of different ways that people do that. But regardless, it's all sort of in a good way. I think grist for the mill transitioning is also it makes you stronger. And I think the only kind of people that I have a hard time relating to or understanding are people who don't try to write the book, don't try to start the company, don't launch the podcast. And that's not to say that I look down on them, I don't relate to that because for me, a lot of my life and a lot of the life of the people that I choose to surround myself with are people who keep trying. And I think there's something really common and beautiful about that because if you're not doing that, whatcha doing? Yolo? Let's write the proposal, get the idea out into the world, let's go. And I think very few people are better than that and that mentality than athletes.
Doree: Love it. Last question for you, and it relates to people who want to get into tennis. I feel like there's been a big conversation in the last few years about how the barrier to entry for pickleball is so much lower and that's why it's exploded so much. And tennis, it's really hard to even get to the point where you can comfortably rally with someone. And I'd love for you to just touch on that a little bit and also how someone who has never played before but wants to start playing tennis, what should they do and how long should they realistically expect for it to take for them to get to a point where they can just hit with someone? I know. Sorry. So many questions.
Caitlin: I'm going to start with your last one first. I think it's the most devastating one because the truth is it's probably two or three years before you can get to a place where you have a facility where you're having fun with another person. It's a lot like skiing in that way where it's like, oh, you're not really having fun in, you're cold and you're featured. There's so much gear you're going to twist. There's so much gear that's about skiing once. Yeah, no, the tennis certainly has a lot less gear, which is actually one of the reasons I feel like it's gotten a little bit of a bad rap in terms of the country club branding. The truth is a public court, two racket, one other person. Totally. And you're kind of start,
I think candidly, for people who have never picked up a racket, first of all, your racket does not matter. You are years away from your racket mattering. And I mean that. It's like you have a wooden racket that's still with old strings or something you buy at the convenience mart, your racket doesn't matter. As a matter of fact, you can play in tree tos, you can play in Stan Smiths. You can play in very fashionable shoes from the eighties, like ACH pumps. You just have to play in some kind of court shoe that allows you to move laterally. It doesn't have to be the fanciest new model, but you're totally right. Do not plan running shoes. Your ankles will never recover and you might die. And I don't want to be responsible for that. But I think in terms of actually pragmatically starting, it's a little expensive to take a lesson.
What I love to tell people to do who are sort of just starting out is figure out a group clinic where you just kind of get to run around, make contact with the ball. Your cost of an hour is amortized over the number of people who are also in the course with you. And then also you can make friends who are kind of at your level and you can go around and find some beginners to hit with. The other thing that's always the right answer that everyone I know who's actually gotten quite good has found a wall.
Elise: That's
Caitlin: It. And a wall is like your garage door. Garage. Your wall is, if you have a New York, a handball court, your wall can be the side of a house, which it was when I was growing up. A wall is a wall is a wall. The wall never misses. And just in terms of putting strings on a ball in a repetitive manner to get the rhythm of it, a wall is, you don't even need. You need literally tennis ball and a racket and ideally lateral movement shoes. But I think that's really it. Don't spend a ton of money getting a bunch of fancy lessons until you have at least the ability to put the ball to the springs on a regular basis. And then my hope is you'll take lessons with other people. Or if you have a little disposable income and you're a little intrepid in making new friends, send yourself to adult tennis camp because it's really fun.
My wife just went without me. I was like, oh, but I'm invited. She was like, no, no. To be clear, this is, and my wife is a 3.0. So she's also at the earlier part of her tennis journey. But she wants to go and play with people at her level and have a beer afterwards and talk about their coach and maybe his politics or whatever. So I think for me, the main thing is the cost shouldn't be the barrier and don't let the equipment scare you away. It's just about finding a regular routine of figuring out how to make enough contact that it's fun. But yeah, it probably will take you two years to get good enough that you're actually really enjoying it. So enjoy the process. You got to enjoy the process in life anyway. And I think that's certainly a plus. Dennis,
Elise: And don't forget the sunscreen.
Doree: Thank you, Elise.
Caitlin: Yes. I'm glad you had that all back. You like that makes total sense beginning where we're ending with self-care.
Doree: Totally. Caitlin, this has been truly a delight. Thank you so much fun for coming
Caitlin: On. Thank you so much. It was amazing to talk to you guys. I should wear more sunscreen.
Doree: I mean, look, we love sun. Are you not wearing enough
Elise: Sunscreen? You don't have a sun?
Doree: I just started wearing sunscreen. Oh, you just started wearing sunscreen? I just started wearing sunscreen. Oh boy. Okay. Wish we had talked to you sooner this year. I got there on the end, Caitlin, where can our listeners buy your magazine or read other content that you're producing, producing, listen to other content that you're producing. Tell us all the things.
Caitlin: It mostly goes down@racketmag.com and yes, we do use the original spelling of A CQU.
Elise: That's how cool you are. You brought the Q back. That's right.
Caitlin: Who brought the Q back and now you'll near find a C and a K be? I think we really, that's one way we definitely have a lot of impact. And the fun thing is we're at all these amazing stockists in a bunch of big cities. So if you go to your favorite magazine store or periodical store and you live in a larger city, that's a really, really easy and fun way to find us. Otherwise recognize com is where it all happens. So thank you guys. Thank you. This has been wonderful. I'm so happy that you're both on a tennis journey, so keep going. We're sure are. Thanks
Doree: Caitlin. Alright. I know you and I are both into tennis right now, and probably our listeners who are not into tennis are sort of like, okay, Doree Elise, we get it. But hopefully people were able to get something out of that
Elise: Conversation with Yeah, we wi with that conversation. I think so. It was also about media and also about life and our talents and our identities so
Doree: Enjoyed. And also, if you decided to take up tennis because of this
Elise: Conversation,
Doree: Let us know.
Elise: You know how to find us
Doree: Doree. Let's check in on our intentions. Okay, let's do that. Okay. So this week I said I was going to cook something new for dinner. I haven't done that yet, but when I made our weekly menu last night, I am going to cook something new on Wednesday night, which is barbecue chicken tacos. And I got the recipe from Caroline Chambers newsletter that I have been talking a lot about,
Elise: Which we're now obsessed with,
Doree: Which we're now obsessed with. I mean, look, and her newsletter is what to cook when you don't feel like cooking. It's at what to cook. So I'll report back on how those are, but I've never made them before. They sound delicious. I mean, it's basically like barbecue chicken, ground barbecue chicken and barbecue sauce and melted cheese in a taco shell. I don't know, it sounds amazing this week. Okay. I have an Apple watch and Are you
Elise: Closing your circles?
Doree: Yeah, it's always closing my circle, but it also reminds me to stand once an hour.
Elise: Oh.
Doree: Which I find annoying, but I'm also like, I get it. But I think I want my intention this week for me to stretch once an hour. So when it tells me to stand, I don't want to stand up and do some stretching. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but I want to just maybe lean over and stretch my hamstrings or do a tricep stretch or this kind of thing.
Elise: Do you stretch? Do you have a stretching practice? Do you do it in the morning or do you do it after you exercise?
Doree: I do it. I
Elise: Don't either. I don't like it.
Doree: I stretch before I play tennis and I stretch a little bit. I did a strength workout yesterday and I did the stretch that they did right after the class, which was like nothing. I should have done another five or 10 minute stretch, but I didn't. But I just want to build that into my day more.
Elise: Yeah.
Doree: So that's I'm Intentioning this week. What about you? It's really good. Thanks. How'd your sleep go?
Elise: I got my sleep scores consistently higher. Nice. Because I stopped drinking alcohol right before bed. Now I'm of the age where I don't think I can drink as much socially, so I am trying to curtail that and then maybe have one drink earlier in the evening. And I have found that it really helped my sleep. It really benefited me. So lessons learned.
Doree: Lessons learned. I mean, I can barely drink anymore, so I fully get that.
Elise: Yeah.
Doree: What about this week
Elise: And then for this week, it seems as though like the summer is already going by so quickly and maybe I feel this way because I haven't been fully present. And so I know this sounds kind of like a woo or esoteric intention, but I'm going to set an intention and I want to really set it by saying it out loud to just fully be in the moments that I'm
Doree: In.
Elise: So whether it's having a drink with a friend on a patio or on a phone call with my mom, phone call with my mom is a great example because I'll be FaceTiming with my mom, but really trying to deal with a kid and make sure something is done for tomorrow and we're just walking around the kitchen. I'm just not doing one thing at a time and I need to do that better in order to actually be with the people that I'm with. So that's my intention.
Doree: I love that. Thanks everyone for listening. Forever 35 is hosted and produced by me, Doha f Freer, and Elise Hu. And produced and edited by Sam Huo. Sammy Reed is our project manager and our network partners a CA. Thanks everyone for listening.
Elise: Thanks y'all. Bye.
* Transcripts are AI generated.