Tennis Tournaments

Tennis Tournaments (often referred to just as tournaments) are are special tennis events held by the community, often the staff, where players "compete" against one another by playing matches to determine a winner. Tournaments can go as long as a single season to over a year, depending on their scale. Anywhere from eight to forty-eight plus players will duke it out to see who is, subjectively, "the best"; but as competitive as these may be, it is important to never forget the Golden Rule: No one wins at tennis, ever!

The golden rule of tennis.

Forum sites will often have accolades for participating in tournament matches; historically, the "Golden Cube of Victor" goes to the tournament winner. Various precious metal-themed tennis racquet badges also go to players who have won (or later on, participated in) enough individual tournament matches.

History

The official tennis 'canon' can be viewed in the List of Tennis Tournaments.

The Beginning

A sense of competition pervaded the aura of video tennis from the time it was first concieved. Conrad Slater made note to stiplify in the first ever wanted thread for a casual match, eventually answered by Miss10, that the match was to have "no winner". Being that he was inspired to adapt Photoshop Tennis to the medium of video, he could have observed this competitive element in the existing Photoshop Tennis communities of the time. Nonetheless, it was considered a standard in tennis' very early days that most tennis matches usually had a poll where viewers could vote on which of the two players won. Due to tennis still being seen as nothing more than a curiosity, as well as the sense of "winning" never really amounting to anything, this ultimately became phased out of general tennis conduct very quickly.

At a certain point during Conrad Slater's reign over the YouChew forums however, when the site had its deepest investment in chronicling the progression and growth of YouTube Poop as a whole, Conrad actually stipulated a requirement that those who wanted to be "featured" as a creator on the site had to participate in at least one tennis match as a requisite. This system became abolished fairly quickly, as this ended up happening towards the end of his era of prominence. RabbitSnore in particular was known to champion much more of a laid-back approach to community operations, especially regarding tennis. Amusingly, while Conrad was immediately against the idea of tennis ever being organized as tournaments, Rabbit was by contrast welcoming of them, seeing their potential for bringing the community together in a spirit of fun.

The first tennis tournament was hosted by Gallers in late 2007, based on a billiards league they played in at the time. RabbitSnore played a big hand in allowing this event to even take place - he had at that point already become a figure Conrad trusted, and was able to convince him to let it take place, along with assuring his own participation. There were only four players, with the other three being SushieBoy, Misslaineous10, and PapaGonzales, who ended up being the (unwilling) winner of this event. While there were yet to be any such trophies for winning tennis tournaments yet, subsequent award implementations on future versions of the forums always featured a trophy for this achievement, and it was always given to PapaGonzales as his only site award. Gallers would be responsible for hosting what are now credited as the first four "official" tournaments to occur on these forums, though his participation and commitment would lessen with each one.

YouChew era

The proper YouChew era of tennis tournaments is considered to have begun with the Tennis Cup. It was the first tournament to occur during the Rabbit/TINS era, and the first tournament where the tennis staff had become established as a central element to the tennis community. All members that would be on the staff during the event participated, and one(NS2) even made it to the final match.

Up until about the end of the Tennis League 3, an ill-fated event which became considered failed after only a month, tennis was at this point seen to have been at its most freewheeling, with players clearly participating out of a sense of mutual enjoyment. There was no clear "meta" for victory in competitive matches up to this point; players clearly engaged matches in the ways that they felt most comfortable, and whether or not they won was purely by fortunate happenstance with every approach having its constituency. A clear moment when this began to change can be identified with the beginning with the Doubles Cup 1, the first tournament in which the tennis staff assumed control and influence over their taking place. The match of Terrorist + Nuthead vs. GameBop + MycroProcessor(2008) ended up failing after only 4 rounds, with no collaborative rounds being made, due to Terrorist finding tennis becoming "more competitive and serious than it is fun":

"I don't like the way Tennis is now, Effects everywhere, Videos flying around, and just [loud distorted audio] with it."

"Fun: Making the Previous round funnier, Better, and more enjoyable.

Competitive: Making the round have loads of Ear rape, Lots of effects, Making the round more Non-enjoyable." -Terrorist, December 29, 2008

Tennis staff member Crash2991 was in agreement:

"Well, it has sorta become competitive. Several players have made it become competitive and made several others think that it was supposed to be the uptight thing, rather than just playing around with each other's videos and showing them to each other."

From a modern perspective, while the original nature and spirit of tennis was well embodied and understood in this period, the frontier of what could be achieved in terms of finding one's unique editing style still had an immense amount of unexplored territory, and these sentiments seemed to surface as a reaction against styles that were unfamiliar and potentially abrasive to those unaccustomed to them. Whatever the case, a schism began to develop for the first time here, and the community at large began to ascribe many of their own individual values as to what made a good tennis round, especially with regards to this developing competitive context. The final match of the Doubles Cup 1 became AjaxCubed + Aesaun vs. MycroProcessor + GameBop(2009), a lineup composed entirely of high intensity, high effect players, three of whom were still relatively new to the community as a whole. It can be argued that the reason that AjaxCubed and Aesaun won this tournament was entirely due to the execution of a 3D visual effect in Final Cut Pro 7 by the former player almost never before seen by the community at the time, gaining them their votes purely from the impression. In the early posts of the Tennis Theory thread on YellowTealPurple, this was a theory posited by dani_phantump as she began to attempt to chronicle the journey of tennis to the present day.

At some point during this early period, an image macro containing the phrase in impact font text "NO ONE WINS AT TENNIS EVER" began to get posted and circulated around the tennis section. This has since become embraced as the Golden Rule of tennis, a foundational principle upon which to remember to allow players to remember that fun, above victory, is what matters most in tennis. dani_phantump has subsequently referred to the very concept of tennis tournaments as the "Great Riddle" of tennis, outlining the question "How do you win in a game where no one wins?", with the answer intended to be that there isn't - or shouldn't be - any strictly defined way to do so.

Ultimately though, the readiness of the community at the time to fully and truly embrace this philosophy was either slow, scattershot or questionable at best. 2009 in particular is seen as an era where the constituency for "simple, classic" tennis competed directly with the "complex, effect-based" constituency for attention across multiple tournaments that took place that year. The Windows Movie Master, Tennis Season and Grey Tennis Tournament all saw matches played separately in both camps of style preference as well as matches with a player each representing either side becoming directly matched with each other, leading to exchanges of near diametric opposite approaches such as piodx vs. RAKninja(2009), GameBop vs. Emperor Ing(2009), and vvaluigi vs. MycroProcessor(2009). [Note: to be continued]

Throughout all of its iterations, YouChew hosted every tennis tournament from their inception up until Doubles Cup 3, with the site going under shortly after its completion.

YTPMania era

The end of Youchew brought quite a disturbance to the tennis scene, with many people calling it quits with the site. As a result, new staff were chosen well after the previous iteration had de-facto retired, and much of the mentors from the previous era simply were not there. This led to a very warped view of tennis that focused much more on competitive behavior than before, as there simply weren't enough people around to show how it had been otherwise. Tournaments became very grandiose and long-going, with turnovers becoming much larger as rounds became much more technical.

The first tournament hosted on YTPMania was Tennis League 5, while the last was Doubles Cup 4 (which also was partially hosted on Pinchbacks.) Right as the Tennis Cup 5, the final tournament of the YTPMania era, concluded, a wave of old tennis regulars including NESfanboi, TheChutley, dani_phantump, trepmaws, and TheFXexpert returned to the community, inspiring the additional return to video craft by players such as Metroid998, GameBop, fiv95, Sid, and even AshcrementVII from the fringes. This would set the stage for the events and the era of tennis that was to follow.

YellowTealPurple Era

The first tournament hosted on YellowTealPurple was 3-Way Tennis Tournament 2 primarily by dani_phantump.

The next tennis tournament's planning phase began relatively early, right in the middle of the second set of 3WTT2. On March 30th, 2025, it was announced that the next tournament would be decided based on a vote from the people rather than internally; the first of its kind. The three options were a third Match Voting Tournament (MVT3), a second Tennis Season (TS2), or a second Triples Tennis Tournament (TTT2). While the Tennis Season 2 initially jumped from a close to a clear lead in votes, some votes ended up pivoting to the last minute to the Match Voting Tournament 3 as the next "official" event (not accounting for other side events that could take place concurrently). This was reasoned to be for allowing a focus on match quality to take precedence to allow the newer community to truly embody the full "spirit" of tennis as its long been understood, along with allowing time for another Season to fully develop as an event.

The 3-Way Tennis tournament 2 proved to be the source of a lot of various tensions and frustrations with the current state of tennis surfacing or coming to light for the first time in the community. In both the Tennis Theory thread and the tournament thread itself on the forums, very thorough and passionate posts were made in which various members expressed these feelings, whether about what they observed in tennis in general or about what they observed in specific matches they played. dani_phantump was the writer of the majority of the longest posts, in addition to reviews written for each match of the tournament in which she expressed her initial thoughts, in an effort by her to chronicle the exact current state of tennis and where it could go while taking in the input of other community regulars. Ultimately, due to observing that many players in the tournament including herself were feeling exhausted and stressed from the competitive pressures that had come to pervade this side of tennis, an "Intermission" period of one month was instituted by her into the tournament to allow everyone to cool off and relax, lasting from May 6 to June 6, 2025. This pushed the start of Set 3 of this tournament a month in advance to allow the chance of refreshment for all still involved.

The Future

The future for tennis tournaments remain uncertain. As modern tennis becomes more and more complex and intricate, it is hard to sit down and create something "competitive" in less than a week. This led to longer turnovers, which led to longer sets, longer tournaments - and much greater burnout.

To contemplate for these changes in the meta, many have considered the abandonment of tournaments altogether towards more "friendly" events. On the contrary, tournaments are one of the driving forces of the community as, well, they're exciting; many people from many eras coming together to create cool stuff. If tournaments do indeed continue, it is likely to see many more Match Voting tournaments and others that emphasize working together, rather than out-doing your opponent.

Tournament Types

There have been six major types of tennis tournaments, with all minor types being derivatives of one of these formats.

Tennis Cup

The 'vanilla' tournament - a bracket of 2^n players face off in a regular, 6 round match. People vote, and the winner moves on. Last man standing wins!

Tennis League

The 'OG' tournament - players are split into 'divisions' where they play everyone in their division, usually to four rounds. Winners get 3 points, ties split at 1 point, and losers get none. After everyone has been played, a multi-way "final match" occurs with the winner of each division. The winner of that match is the winner overall!

While the league format has had the most iterations (alongside cups) at five, it has largely been criticized in modern times due to its length and creating lack of drive to continue after losing enough games. It likely will never happen again in its known iteration.

Match Voting Tournament

A newer, but more popular type of tournament - you are given a random 'partner' to work with, to create a match of your vision (usually 6 rounds). When complete, voters choose their favorite matches out of everyone in the set. Depending on the setup, the lower slice of matches are cut off, and everyone else continues. You are then assigned a new random partner. The 'final' usually consists of 3-4 teams. The highest voted match of the final wins!

This has been popular as it encourages cooperation and creativity to achieve a much more re-watchable match and enjoyable experience for the players. There have been two of them so far.

Doubles/Triples Tournament

Similar to a tennis cup, however involving "teams" of players that face off each other, with varying formats. This usually means the first rounds of the match are solo works, showing off each player, before transitioning into collaborative rounds. See Team Tennis for more information about this format.

X-Way Tournament

Bleeding the lines between a Tennis Chain and a regular match, X-Way Tournaments involve long strings of players partaking in a much longer match. In shorter X-Ways, only the top voted player continues; in longer ones, one player gets voted out instead (think Survivor).

This is another tournament type that struggles with length and remains unlikely to happen again.

Tennis Season

The most bizarre type of tournament that likely will remain a one-off unless heavily refactored. "Teams" of players competed throughout "gameweeks", similar to how football works. A player was chosen to represent their team for that gameweek, and then a particular match would play out against another team. Each player also had certain abilities that they could decide upon at the start of the tournament. Teams would build up points for winning matches, with the team with the most points at the end winning the tournament.

Achievements

The winners of each tennis tournament can be found in the List of Tennis Tournaments.

40+ Wins

GameBop - Due to the amount of tournaments GameBop has participated in, while winning most of the matches they participated in, they have the most wins by far out of any other tennis player.

10+ Wins

mrdoognoog

dani_phantump

Archive

The Archive Masterlist is the main spreadsheet for keeping track of tournaments, past and present.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10cpwoIfVKUZLDYPYNmOMH6X3oG5g3D4Q6O3JDCcfyf0/edit?usp=sharing

A similar list also exists for unofficial tournaments and other notable tennis events. See Tennis Archives for more.