I am a tennis fan.
It's a sport I remember watching as a 10-year-old kid with my grandfather in Sri Lanka, where I grew up.
It's probably the sport I've watched the most in my life, and it's certainly the sport I've followed for the longest time.
This isn't a post about tennis.
It's a post about how to care for tennis fans.
Of course, you can replace tennis with anything you're building.
Wimbledon
I am writing the first draft of this post just two days following the Wimbledon finals.
Wimbledon is tennis' oldest championship tournament.
It's categorized as a grand slam and there are only three other grand slams in the calendar year.
Wimbledon takes place in London (England) and I happen to live in Waterloo (Canada). I also don't take two weeks off work to just watch tennis. Well, I haven't done that yet.
What this means is that I find myself checking the scores of the tennis matches online, several times a day.
Until a few years ago, you had to go to the official Wimbledon website to check the match scores.
Now, you can literally just type the word "Wimbledon" (when the tournament is on) into Google and you'll get something that looks like this:
For a tennis fan, this is fantastic.
All the scores you need, in one convenient place, updated in real-time.
The Ball
I would like to draw your attention to the categories of matches along the top of the image above.
Men's Singles. Women's Singles. Men's Doubles. Women's Doubles.
You can see in the picture, that the categories continue to the right.
If you keep scrolling to the right, here's what you get:
Just one more category—Mixed Doubles—and a green tennis ball.
Let's pause here and just review a few things.
Quick Review
I'm a tennis fan.
I'm not so big a fan that I take time off work to watch the four grand slams that happen during the year. I'm sure I will one day.
The tournament that just finished around the time of writing this post is Wimbledon.
I literally searched the word "Wimbledon" on Google several times a day, for two weeks, and instantly got what I was in search of.
Now back to that last picture, Mixed Doubles and a green tennis ball.
The Ball Again
The point of this post, is that green tennis ball.
Before reading on, can you guess what it is?
Is it even something you can click on? Is it just a cool icon to indicate that this is a tennis tournament?
Seriously, take a guess.
I'll give you a dramatic line to take a mental reading break and try. Here:
The answer is that of course it's something you can click on.
It's Google. It exists to give you things to click on.
When I clicked on that green tennis ball, here's what I got:
A game! Another classic Google move.
It was a very simple game, it just required moving left to right to try and hit a ball back as many times as possible to a computer opponent.
Kind of like the classic game Pong, with a tennis theme.
The Point
To find this game, you had to be a tennis fan.
You had to search for Wimbledon on Google, and care enough about the game to scroll past the two categories that most casual observers care about: Men's Singles and Women's Singles.
You had to be curious enough to wonder what that green tennis ball was. Of course a tennis fan would be curious.
I didn't read about this hidden game anywhere, and yet, a team of people put it there for people like me to find.
Most people, will only care about what you make at a surface level.
Fans, will go much deeper.
Make something for them.
I assure you, they care enough to find it.
