In this post, I would like to share the list of my favourite apps. This does not take into consideration of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, which are highly essential in keeping me updated with breaking news and amazing photos of the tennis players usually created and shared by the tennis fans in the community. I spend a lot of time on the web because many nice tennis contents are still not available on mobile applications such as Menstennisforums, TennisForum or most of the men's tennis players like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
Here's a list of my top 10 FREE tennis apps, must-haves for any enthusiasts.
1. ATP/WTA Live
Any tennis fan needs to have this on their phone. This is the official live scoring app provided by the ATP World Tour and WTA. So that means, you get to follow your favourite tennis players and all the tennis tournaments throughout the entire season, including the ATP Challenger Tour events. What I find most helpful are some of the important features such as OOP (order of play), live match statistic (so that I can use the data to complement with my discussion with fellow tennis Twitter friends from around the world during an ongoing match), tournament draws and head to head records.
2. Australian Open Tennis Championships
Each year I'd be looking forward to this Grand Slam tournament because of the amazing efforts done by their social media team. There are so many information available about the tournament and they never failed in engaging with their audiences online. I particularly love the official colour and the newly designed AO logo. They have the push alerts function so it's great for any avid fans to receive breaking news and special offers be it purchases at the Melbourne Park or online.
3. Wimbledon Championships
Just like the historical tournament itself, this is the mother of all tennis apps. It has a sleek yet elegant layout design. I particularly love the live commentary, 360 degree video from the practice courts and their daily live coverage on podcast. If you're visiting the tournament, you can enable push messages to be delivered to your mobile. Love this app a lot!
4. US Open Tennis Championships
This is another important app built for a Grand Slam tournament, which every tennis enthusiast needs to have on their phone. It has all the features offered by other GS tournaments but this is my least favourite app among the 4 of them. I did not mention about the Roland Garros French Open app because it has been taken off iTunes.
5. MyATP
Since the individual men's tennis players don't usually have their own apps, this is the best app you could have. You can subscribe to your favourite tennis players and watch out for trending updates. There are a lot of Q&As with featured tennis players, which you can comment, like and share, so that's a plus point for this app. You can also send and receive direct messages with the people that you follow or follow you, so you can image the interactivity going on with the tennis fans around the world. This is an awesome app!
6. WTA Finals
WTA doesn't have an app that can be used all year long like MyATP. However they do have an app for the WTA Finals. It's extremely useful if you're using this at the venue. They have an interaction fan zone where tennis enthusiasts can answer tennis trivia questions. You can also take your Singapore Selfie which you can use to share on your social media and help promote the beautiful country at the same time.
7. Tennis TV
This is an extremely important app if you needed access to live tennis matches on the go. The app is free and you can watch snippets of videos on the Freeplay tab. However, in order to watch live or replay old matches, you need to be ready to fork out some money to pay for the subscription fee. It's quite hefty considering you need to pay RM62.90 per month (USD15) or RM519.90 annually (USD126). Highly recommended any tennis fans to subscribe to this instead of using those illegal streaming online.
8. Maria Sharapova Official App
Updates are pretty slow on these app due to lack of content. I downloaded this app just for the sake of downloading it. I would prefer to read about her updates on her Instagram account.
9. Garbiñe Muguruza Official App
I love Garbine but I don't really fancy this app because updates are also extremely slow due to lack of content. Again, I recommend to follow her on social media platforms instead for the latest updates.
10. Virtua Tennis Challenge
I don't play online games that much but I thought it'll be really nice to mention about this game as one of my favourite tennis apps. I have played this game many years back and I still think SEGA produced the best tennis game. Great visuals as always, you can save your game progress and the ability to adjust your control on different surfaces including clay, indoor hard court and grass. Simply the best tennis mobile game.
Do let me know if there are other really cool tennis apps which I don't mention here. Or apps which are available on Android and not on iOS.
