If I could go back thirty-odd years and tell myself one thing, it would be to pick up a tennis racket sooner. I love the sport. The movement, the power, the technique, the mental chess match happening between two points, it is just a beautiful game. Padel and pickleball get plenty of love too, and rightly so. But tennis has in the recent years been the one for me.
That love found its way to my kids, each in their own direction. One of my sons played competitive basketball this past season and recreational tennis. The other stuck with tennis as his main thing, simply because he loves playing. Then, partway through the school year, our youngest asked if he could enter some actual tournaments. Not just training, not just hitting for fun. Real events. That request came entirely from him, no pushing from us, so we said yes.
The Diary That Didn’t Work
Here is where it got interesting. Once he started competing, win or lose, I realized we had almost nothing to work with afterward (regardless of the result the only question we would ask him is how he think he played and what could have been better overall – we are not the obsessive parents shouting that our son is the next Alcaraz, but to me reflecting is important and if I can reflect on his play, then perhaps he’ll take note of that) . A pen, some paper, maybe a note-taking app. That was it. My wife suggested he keep a tennis diary, something he could fill in after each match to reflect on how he played. Good idea in theory. In practice, it fizzled out fast, the way most manual habits do when there is no system behind them.
That is usually where the real problem shows up. Not in the idea, but in the process meant to support it.
Why Every Tennis Tracking App Missed the Mark
So I went looking for a proper tennis tracking app, something simple enough for a kid to use and useful enough for a parent to actually rely on. What I found was a graveyard of overbuilt or underbuilt options.
The free apps did not do what I needed. The paid ones came loaded with features nobody in our house wanted, plus the inevitable monthly subscription. UTR and DUPR track competitive results well enough. Swing vision brings serious AI analysis into the picture. There is no shortage of camera rigs and AI-powered ball machines promising to transform your game. All of it impressive. None of it what I was after.
I did not want a coaching platform or a rankings engine. I wanted a tennis tracking app that let a parent, or a player themselves, log games and reflect on them quickly, without wading through fifteen menus to do it. That is not a niche request. Ask around and you will find plenty of recreational players who would track their progress in a heartbeat if the process were not such a hassle.
Building What Was Missing
The idea actually clicked while I was driving one day. My wife mentioned something about the mental side of the game, how much of tennis lives in a player’s head rather than their legs (albeit I find this more important than a perfect technique), and something just lined up for me. I turned to her and said, you know what, let me build it.
That is very on-brand for me, honestly. I fix what’s broken and build what’s missing, and this was no exception. The past few months have been a bit rough on other fronts, so building something useful with my hands, or in this case a keyboard, was exactly the kind of project I needed. It also happens to fit into a broader ecosystem I have been mapping out for 2026, which is a story for another post.
We brainstormed together, my wife and I, throwing ideas back and forth until something simple and workable took shape. And I do mean simple. No AI gimmicks, no subscription traps, no fifteen-tab dashboard. Just a clean way to log a match and look back on it later.
What Ronda Baseline Actually Does
I called it Ronda Baseline. It is an offline tennis tracking app that lets you track yourself, your kids, or other family members through multiple profiles, then look back at the full history in one place. Played a friendly match today, then two tournament matches this weekend? It all lives together, easy to review and compare.
No signup. No AI. No login. No nothing, in the best possible sense. Multiple profiles, a handful of meaningful data points, and a straightforward way to keep an overall read on how your kids, or you, are actually doing over time.
It is currently in closed testing, with a release planned for August. There will be a one-time cost to download it, and every update after that is free, permanently. I still have plenty planned for it down the line.
Right now I use it to track my own matches. My wife tracks hers. As parents, going back through the comments and watching the progression, and understanding the reasons behind a good or bad outing, has already turned out to be more useful than either of us expected. I built this because we needed it. Turns out that is usually the best reason to build anything.
The Bigger Lesson Here
Step back from tennis for a second, because this is where it connects to something bigger. Most of the “solutions” out there try to solve everything at once. More features, more data, more automation, more subscription tiers. But more is not always better. Sometimes the actual gap in the market, or in your own life, is something painfully simple that nobody bothered to build because it did not look impressive enough on a pitch deck.
That is a process problem as much as a product problem. When something isn’t working, whether it’s a habit, a workflow, or a tennis diary that keeps sitting empty, the fix is rarely “add more.” It is usually “remove what’s getting in the way and rebuild around what actually matters.” I wrote a while back about how consistency quietly beats talent over the long run, and this is the same principle wearing a different jacket. A tennis tracking app nobody opens is worthless. A boring, simple one that gets used every week is not.
Is your version of a tennis diary sitting untouched somewhere too? A habit tracker you downloaded and forgot, a spreadsheet that stopped updating in March? It might not be the habit that failed. It might be the process around it.
Key Takeaways
- If an existing tool feels overbuilt for your actual need, that gap is worth paying attention to, not ignoring.
- Simple, boring, and actually used will always beat complex, impressive, and abandoned.
- Reflection needs a system behind it. Good intentions alone rarely survive contact with a busy week.
- The best products often come from solving your own problem first, then noticing other people have it too.
If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading. I hope this gets you thinking about the tools sitting half-used in your own life, and whether the fix is really about effort, or about the process around it. If it resonated, give it a like, drop a comment, or share it with someone who’d get something out of it. I appreciate you.
Mindset First. Keep thriving.