Gifts for the Tennis Fan: A Wimbledon Buying Guide

Somewhere in your life there is a person who has just disappeared. They were here a moment ago, and now they are gone — swallowed whole by the Wimbledon fortnight, curtains drawn against the glare on the screen, phone face-down, emitting a low groan every time someone nets a backhand. You will not get a full sentence out of them until the trophies are lifted. You know the type. You may be married to the type. You may, if we are honest, be the type.

The good news is that this particular obsession is one of the easiest in the world to indulge, because tennis is a sport absolutely swimming in lovely things to own — from the genuinely useful to the gloriously pointless. So whether you are shopping for the tennis-mad friend, the parent who plays twice a week, the partner who has emotionally relocated to Centre Court, or simply yourself, here is a guide to the best gifts for the tennis fan in your life — from the genuinely useful to the joyfully unnecessary. Every pick below is something a real tennis lover would actually be delighted to receive, with not a scrap of filler or clutter among them.

For the one who reads everything

Tennis has produced some of the best sportswriting there is, and a great tennis book is the perfect gift because it lasts long after the fortnight ends. The gold standard is Andre Agassi's memoir, routinely called one of the finest sports autobiographies ever written — brutally honest, beautifully told, and famous for its opening confession that he hated the game that made him. A copy of Agassi's "Open" and the other great tennis reads will keep a fan happy through the off-season and beyond.

If you want to widen the net beyond a single title, our full rundown of the best tennis books ever written is a ready-made shopping list of the memoirs, histories and novels worth wrapping. For the reader in your life, a stack of these beats almost anything with a logo on it.

For the one who dresses the part

Nothing says "I take my tennis seriously, even off the court" like a proper polo shirt — which, as it happens, was invented by a tennis champion in the 1920s to escape the sweltering shirts of the era. That heritage is exactly why it remains such a good gift: it is one of the few garments that has never gone out of style in a hundred years.

A classic piqué polo shirt, in white or a clean block colour, is the safe, stylish, always-welcome choice — smart enough for lunch, sporty enough for a hit, and quietly signalling that the wearer knows their tennis history whether they realise it or not. With the "tenniscore" look firmly back in fashion, you would struggle to find a more on-trend present that also happens to be a genuine wardrobe staple.

For the one who actually plays

If your fan does not just watch but plays, the most useful gifts are the unglamorous ones they never quite get round to buying themselves. Chief among them: proper hydration. Summer tennis is punishing, and a good insulated bottle that keeps a drink cold through a two-hour match on a hot court is a small luxury that gets used every single time they step on court. A quality insulated stainless-steel water bottle, ideally paired with a tub of electrolyte tablets, is a genuinely thoughtful present for anyone who plays in the heat.

It is also, quietly, a gift about looking after them, which lands well. As we covered in our guide to playing tennis through the summer heat, staying properly hydrated is the single biggest thing that separates an enjoyable match from a miserable one — and most club players get it badly wrong. Solve that for them, and every hot Saturday from now on comes with a small reminder of you.

For the one always heading to a match

For the fan who is forever on their way to or from a court, the right bag is a genuinely transformative gift — because the wrong one, a supermarket holdall with a dying zip, is a small daily misery they have simply learned to live with. A proper tennis bag or backpack, with insulated compartments to keep rackets out of the sun, room for a change of kit, and dedicated pockets for all the fiddly essentials, is the sort of thing a keen player uses every single week and almost never treats themselves to. A well-designed tennis backpack or racket bag quietly upgrades every trip to the court, which is exactly why it makes such a satisfying present.

Better still, tuck a few consumables into the pockets before you wrap it — a couple of fresh overgrips, a vibration dampener, a spare set of strings, a tube of balls — and you have turned a single gift into a little kit of everything they were about to run out of anyway. It is the practical present that shows you understand the logistics of their obsession, not merely the romance of it, and those are often the ones that get used the hardest.

For the one who wants to get better

For the improver — the one who has caught the bug and now wants to actually be good — the best gifts help them practise when there is no partner and no court time. A tennis rebounder or practice net, which fires the ball back at you off a taut angled surface, lets a keen player groove their strokes solo in a garden or a park for as long as their legs hold out. A decent tennis rebounder or practice wall is the kind of present that quietly turns a casual player into a noticeably better one over a summer.

It suits the newcomer especially well, the friend who has been inspired by a fortnight of watching to finally give the game a proper go. If that is who you are shopping for, pair it with our beginner's guide to getting on court — because the science is now clear that taking up tennis is one of the best things a person can do for a long, healthy life. Few gifts can honestly claim to add years to someone's life. This one can.

For the littlest fan

A fortnight of Wimbledon has a way of turning children into sudden, fierce converts, and there is no better moment to put a first racket into a small hand than the week they have decided they are the next big thing. Junior tennis gear is cleverly built for exactly this: lighter, shorter rackets sized to little arms, and soft, low-bounce balls that are easy to make contact with and almost impossible to hurt anyone with. A good junior racket and starter set is the gift that might just begin a lifelong love affair with the game.

It is also, quietly, one of the most valuable things on this entire list, because a child who takes up tennis is being handed a sport they can keep playing for the next eighty years. Pair it with a trip to a local court and our guide for tennis-playing families, and you are not really giving a racket at all. You are giving a head start — and, if the game takes, a companion for life.

For the one who takes it to the couch

Some fans express their love mostly from the sofa, and for them the gift is more of the thing they adore: great tennis on screen. The sport has inspired a genuinely brilliant run of films and documentaries in recent years, from Oscar-winning dramas to intimate behind-the-scenes series that show what the tour is really like. A classic like the documentary "Strokes of Genius" and other great tennis films makes for a perfect rainy-day watch when there is no live tennis to be had.

For the full menu of what to buy or stream, our guide to the best tennis movies and documentaries covers the lot — the dramas, the fly-on-the-wall series, the ones that will make even a non-fan cry. Bundle a couple together and you have given someone an entire cosy weekend.

For the one who wants Wimbledon at home

Part of loving tennis is loving the whole ritual around it, and no ritual is more beloved than strawberries and cream, the taste of the English summer that Wimbledon has served since 1877. You cannot post someone the atmosphere of Centre Court, but you can absolutely help them recreate the spread at home.

A pretty set of dessert bowls for strawberries and cream, perhaps alongside the makings of a jug of Pimm's, turns a fortnight of watching into a proper occasion. It is a small, warm, very British sort of gift — the kind that says you understand that for this person, the tennis is only half the pleasure. The other half is the summer afternoon built around it.

For the one who has everything

And then there is the fan who already owns every gadget and needs nothing — for whom the answer is something with charm rather than function. Tennis has a gorgeous visual heritage to raid: a beautiful vintage-style wooden tennis racket mounted on a wall, a framed print of an old Championships poster, or a piece of tennis-themed homeware brings a bit of the sport's elegance into a room without anyone ever having to swing it.

These are the gifts that get commented on for years, precisely because they are useless in the best possible way. A wooden racket from the pre-graphite age, hung above a desk or in a hallway, is a quiet daily reminder of everything the person loves about the game — and it will outlast every high-tech present under the tree.

There is something fitting, too, about giving a piece of the sport's past to someone who spends every summer glued to its present. Tennis wears its history more proudly than almost any other game — the wooden rackets, the old posters, the black-and-white photographs of players in long white flannels — and a well-chosen piece of that heritage does something no gadget can: it tells the fan that you understand their love of the game is not just about this year's champions, but about a tradition stretching back nearly a hundred and fifty years. That is a lot of meaning to hang on a hallway wall, and it costs no more than a decent gadget that will be obsolete by spring.

The one gift that never misses

If you take only one thing from this list, take this: the very best tennis gift usually is not a thing at all. It is time on a court together, or two tickets to a match, or an afternoon booked at the local club, or simply the promise of a hit followed by a drink. Tennis is, at its heart, a deeply social game — the whole reason it is so good for us is that you cannot play it alone — and the gift of your company, racket in hand, is one no parcel can match.

It also, conveniently, costs whatever you want it to. A voucher for a single lesson, a booking at a public court, a promise scrawled on a card to finally play that match you keep talking about — these land harder than almost anything you can wrap, because they give the fan the one thing they truly want, which is more tennis, with someone they like.

A quick word on shopping smart

One honest piece of advice before you buy: with tennis gear, the classics are classics for a reason, and it usually pays to choose quality over novelty. A well-made polo, a solid insulated bottle, a genuinely good book — these get used and treasured for years. The gimmicky, logo-slathered, seemed-fun-in-the-shop stuff tends to end up in a drawer by August.

This is also your warning about the tennis-themed novelty aisle, which is a genuine minefield. Steer well clear of the joke gifts — the tennis-ball stress toys, the mugs printed with limp puns about serving and love, the gadget that swears it will fix a forehand over a single weekend and does nothing but gather dust in a cupboard. A true fan can smell a token gift, grabbed in a hurry because the shop happened to have a tennis section, from clear across the room. If your only realistic options are that sort of thing, the honest move is to buy nothing at all and offer them a hit instead — which, as it happens, is the best gift on this whole list anyway.

Spend a little more on the thing they will actually reach for again and again, and a little less on the thing that photographs well and does nothing. The tennis fan in your life does not need more clutter. They need the good version of something they were going to use anyway — and, ideally, a reason to get out on court and use it with you.

The last word

The person lost to the Wimbledon fortnight will resurface eventually, blinking, mildly heartbroken that it is over for another year. When they do, the right gift can carry a little of that fortnight forward into the rest of the summer — a book to read on the train, a polo for the next warm day, a bottle for the next hot match, a bowl of strawberries in front of the next great final.

None of it, in the end, is really about the stuff. It is about telling someone that you see how much they love this odd, beautiful, century-and-a-half-old game — and that you love them enough to lean into it rather than roll your eyes. Buy them something good, or better yet, offer them a hit. Either way, you will have understood the assignment perfectly.

Sources

• SUPER.TENNIS features: the best tennis books, the origin of the polo shirt, playing tennis in the heat, the best tennis films and documentaries, and the history of strawberries and cream at Wimbledon
• The Copenhagen City Heart Study on tennis and longevity, for the social and health case behind the "gift of a hit"

Photo: A tennis racket and balls / Vladsinger / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0