I'm Cody Sharp. I grew up in Marion, Indiana, and played tennis in high school. I was even in the newspaper once back in 2000, which I'm pretty sure was the pinnacle of my athletic career - ha.
After high school, I pretty much stopped playing tennis for almost 20 years. Then, about nine years ago, I picked up a racquet again and remembered how much I loved the game.
You probably can't tell from the svelte physique but I hate running and always have. But it turns out you can put a tennis ball in front of me and I'll chase it around like a dog for two hours without thinking twice about it. So I started playing again several times per week.
And eventually, I started noticing something that was driving me crazy.
I'd play someone for two hours, and somewhere during that match I'd start figuring them out. Maybe their backhand was weak. Maybe they didn't handle slower balls very well. Maybe serving out wide worked better than serving down the middle. Whatever it was, I'd eventually find something that worked.
Then I'd play that same person again seven months later and completely forget everything I'd learned. I'd spend the first half hour figuring out the exact same things I'd already figured out the last time we played.
It was ridiculous.
I started thinking there had to be a better way to keep track of this stuff. What worked against this person? What didn't? Should I serve to their backhand? Should I hit with more pace? Less pace? Did they struggle when I came to the net (if they didn't, I would)?
I didn't need a complicated scouting report. I just needed to remember what I'd already learned. Preferably before I was down 3-0 in the first set.
So I built something
That's where RecAce started. I wanted a simple way to keep track of my matches, my opponents, and the things I was learning along the way.
Then it grew - I started tracking whether I was actually improving, how often I was playing, who I was playing against, and what I needed to work on.
And growing up I never took any lessons but now I've taken a few and it turned out, tennis lessons aren't cheap. You can spend $60, $70, or $80 an hour working with a good instructor, learn something useful, and then forget half of it by the time you're playing your next match. So I started tracking those sessions too.
Today, I've logged the last 160 matches I played in RecAce and a ton of practices too.
One of my favorite features is that I can just talk into my phone after a match. I tell it the score, explain what happened, mention what worked and what didn't, and RecAce organizes everything for me. I don't have to sit there typing out a bunch of notes after playing two hours of tennis.
And when I play someone I haven't seen in a year and a half, I can pull up our previous matches and remind myself what I learned. It's exactly what I wanted. Heck, I can even plan ahead and RecAce will predict the score of the match and give me a gameplan for how best to play them based on the strengths it has learned about my game and from the notes the last time the opponent and I played.
Cody Finds Out About Junior Tennis
My daughter Addie got into tennis a few years ago, and eventually became a pretty darn good player.
Addie plays high school tennis, has competed in junior tournaments (talk about a whole world I had never experienced growing up), and has spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to improve. And, wouldn't you know it, she started running into the same problem I had.
When you're playing high school and junior tennis, you see the same opponents over and over again. Sometimes you'll play a girl in a tournament and see her again six months later. Having a few notes about what worked the last time can make a big difference. So RecAce became something we could both use.
We've spent hundreds of hours playing tennis together over the last few years. At first, I was teaching her and now on some days, she's begrudgingly teaching me more than I'm teaching her.
But hey, I can still beat her for now (I find it helps to keep our match time artificially short so I won't tire out), but she's a much more consistent player than I'll ever be and I love watching her play.
Even better, my son Sully plays tennis too, and he just finished his freshman tennis season.
Some of my favorite memories over the last several years have been the time the kids and I spent together on tennis courts. And best of all, I've been able to coach them along with some of their friends as part of the USTA Junior Team Tennis program (highly recommended!). When I started playing tennis again all of those years ago, I didn't necessarily anticipate how it would bring us all together, but I'm awfully glad I did.
And that's really why RecAce exists
I wanted something that would help me become a better tennis player. Not necessarily a great tennis player. I'm 44 years old. I have a pretty good idea of how this is all going to turn out in the years ahead (moving from singles to doubles and having a younger partner do the ball chasing).
But I can still improve.
I can still learn something from a match, remember it, and use it the next time. I can keep track of my progress, my exercise, and all the people I've played along the way. Plus, when I'm eating all of the leftover 'Pizza night' pizza by myself working on RecAce at 11PM on a Saturday, I can lie to myself that tomorrow's tennis match will help me burn off thousands of calories.
And someday, I think it'll be pretty sweet to look back at hundreds of matches and have a record of all that time I spent doing something I love. That's what I want RecAce to be for other people too.
I don't know if everyone will use RecAce the way I do. But I know one thing.
I'll be using it for myself forever.
Cody SharpFounder, RecAce
Fishers, Indiana
UTR 5.8
Questions or ideas? Email me at cody@recace.com.