Racquet, Issue No. 28, on the Cerith Terrace

Racquet is the rare tennis magazine that treats the sport as culture first. Print, unhurried, closer to a literary quarterly than a results page. It is the publication that decided tennis deserved essays and photography rather than recaps, and has been quietly right about that for a decade.

On Sunday, March 22, in the middle of Miami Open week, we co-hosted the launch of Issue No. 28 with Racquet and The Shelborne by Proper, on the Cerith Terrace.

The timing was the whole design. The tournament was still running across the bay, the city was full of people who had flown in for tennis, and the terrace faced west. Bacardi poured. Guests and players moved between conversations as the light went. Nobody was in a hurry, which on a Sunday of Miami Open week is its own kind of luxury.

[[ NEEDED: headcount and who came. Members, Racquet readers, players in town for the Open? Anyone worth naming from the Racquet or Shelborne side besides Caitlin? ]]

[[ NEEDED: one concrete moment. A conversation, two people who met for the first time, something someone said. This is the paragraph that makes it a story instead of a listing. ]]

The day before, Caitlin Thompson had been on the padel courts at the entrance to the Miami Open, playing an Americano with MRC member Fede Mercado. Twenty-four hours later we were on a terrace launching her magazine. That sequence is not a coincidence, it is the argument. Racquet and this club are trying to do the same thing from different directions: treat tennis as something you live inside rather than something you watch.

Miami Open week fills this city with people who love the game and have nowhere in particular to put that. For one evening on the beach, there was somewhere.

The rest of the year, we play. The Player Challenge is open to members and non members.