Tennis apparel – it’s not a phrase I’ve ever used in my daily life. I would simply never refer to tennis apparel – I’d call it ‘tennis clothes’ or ‘tennis gear’ or ‘tennis kit’. But never ‘tennis apparel.’ Yet 60,000 people a month search for the phrase ‘tennis apparel,’ in the UK alone.

I encountered the phrase tennis apparel when doing a general bit of keyword research around the word tennis I was expecting to find that people search for things like ‘tennis racket’ and ‘tennis courts,’ ‘tennis players,’ and ‘tennis tickets.’

But it seems like tennis apparel is one of the really big search terms in the world of tennis.

Tennis apparel – who would have thought it?

But it seems I was not the first person to stumble upon this rather bizarre fact. The vultures were there long ago.

It seems people have set up sites all over the internet, and filled them with gibberish terms, all designed to fool the search engines and bring in people searching for terms such as  tennis apparel.

So if you go to Google and do a search for ‘tennis apparel‘, even on the first page you get a  string of sites that are clearly bogus. I tried this on Google blog search as well and the result are even worse. By filtering out the so-called commercial sites – ones that are actually selling tennis apparel – you are left solely with the scammers and the hucksters, the sites where the words have been written by software programmes and robots. They are designed to pull in people from the search engines, people searching for tennis apparel, in the hope they will click on an advertising link.

Here’s some nonsense from a site called – and I kid you not – ‘articlesnatch’. It came up on page two of a Google search for tennis apparel, so these guys are probably getting good traffic:

Games apparel are designed to attain the player sufficient and play at his best. Tennis is similarly a very effective sport asking for quick and proper body movement that required your dressing to be universal and easy. The tennis apparel must not divert the concentration of the participant at any stratum as tennis is likewise a game of leading deliberation and engrossment. In this clause we’ll hold you some truly useful tips on purchasing tennis dress. No matter you are a school level tennis player or simply a tennis player lover, these tips will definitely assist you out getting the world-class tennis apparel.

It’s all like that: gibberish. It’s just keywords spewed onto a page, with no human involvement.

Try this, the intro paragraph from an article on the ‘tennis apparels’ blog:

Aside from practicing our best shots on a sweet spot of our tennis racket to eliminate our opponent, we are also thinking on whats the right apparel for us. With gender conscious that men and women had a different Tennis Apparel Shirt.

The text is nonsense, not written by a human being, but doing a good enough job of fooling Google, getting ranked highly and possibly even making some money. I haven’t provided links, by the way, because I don’t think they deserve them.

We all know the internet is weird, but this is downright bizarre. If you actually go out there searching for tennis related information, you have to wade through this rubbish, created by morons and hucksters to bring in a few measly dollars. It can’t be a sustainable business plan, producing this rubbish. But it wastes everyones time.

So… here’s the lowdown on tennis apparel:

Modern fabrics

The super hi-tech modern fabrics that are supposed to wick away sweat and keep you cool – and therefore even improve your playing ability, well they work. They are much more comfortable than old-fashioned cotton.

You need shorts and a shirt made of this material – usually branded things like ‘dri-fit’ and ‘coolmax’, especially for hot days and important matches. Unlike cotton, they don’t get heavy with sweat, stick and cling to your body and so restrict your movement.

The same goes for socks – you need the acrylics rather than cotton. The acrylics help prevent athlete’s foot, blisters and ingrown nails. The modern fibers and air circulation channels manage moisture and help keep your feet cool and dry.

As for fashion, well it’s largely a matter of taste. Some of the garish colours and designs look old-fashioned quickly … as in within months if not weeks. The designs used on the tour change so fast, you could spend a fortune on tennis apparel trying to keep up. Go for something solid but functional and you’ll probably feel better about yourself on the court, and that’ll give you a better chance of winning.

At the grass roots of British tennis, there is very little competition. Tennis is not played as a competitive sport but as a leisure activity, there to provide some gentle recreation.

When people turn up at clubs, they are invited to join in with this recreational tennis. Most people can get by at this standard with no training or technique. And most people never bother to improve.

Other sports aren’t run this way.

If you want to play for the village football or cricket team, you have to be good enough, you have to go to a few training sessions, but you also have the prospect of playing real matches. When people play football and cricket, they play matches in a league structure. A huge percentage of tennis players never take part in competition.

This has a knock on effect on the juniors. If the adults in the club aren’t involved in competitive play and keen to improve their game, the juniors will take cues from this. There will be less competitive play for the juniors to step up to. The will see tennis as a leisure activity, and the competitive among them will look for other challenges.

What we need is far more competitive tennis at every level, so that even complete beginners are thrown into situations where they have to win and lose. If they want to win, they will need to learn some strokes and improve. The whole game will benefit.

This needs to start with the LTA. The LTA should be organising competitions open not just to the elite or to those who chase down competitive situations. The LTA should be going out to the clubs and pestering them to enter more teams and individuals into competitions. There should be competitions everywhere, not just for juniors but for adults and seniors too. Not just for the promising elite but also for complete beginners.

And there should be a series of national competitions open to every tennis player in the country. Imagine a men’s singles tournament that, like the FA Cup in football, starts at the grass roots level. Everyone in the club could play. Better players, with rankings, could join the tournament as it went along, in later rounds. Even the most hapless tennis player could play, and would be much more interested in the final result as a consequence.

There should be competitions to play in every month, every week. There should be competition everywhere.

This site isn’t really live as such yet, but we’re finally getting there. It will be soon. Honest. Hey, it’s only taken 18 months to get his far. What’s the rush?