Internal · asset previews · September 2026

Scratch.

New assets for the briefs before they go into any page: three charts built from real league data, and the first two action clips. Nothing here is final — tell me what to change.

Brief upgrades plan · items 2 and 4

■ Chart A

Where INTENNSE sits on the calendar.

The argument in one picture: INTENNSE is a season, and the other team events are weekends. Eight playing weeks, in the middle of the summer, ending before the US Open swing peaks.

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC INTENNSE — 8 weeks · 58 days INTENNSE · 8 weeks · 58 days Australian Open Australian Open Roland Garros Roland Garros Wimbledon Wimbledon US Open US Open Washington Washington Canada Canada Cincinnati Cincinnati Winston-Salem Winston-Salem United Cup · 10 days United Cup · 10 days Laver Cup · 3 days Laver Cup · 3 days Davis Cup Finals · 6 days Davis Cup Finals · 6 days World Team Tennis · 6 nights World Team Tennis · 6 nights INTENNSE Grand Slams US summer swing Team events
INTENNSE Grand Slams Team events
2026 season. INTENNSE: 5 June – 1 August, 58 days, one dark week for Wimbledon. Sources: data.intennse.com/2026/calendar.tsv; published tournament calendars.
The numbers behind it
EventDates 2026Days
INTENNSE season5 Jun – 1 Aug58
World Team Tennis1 – 15 Dec15 · 6 match nights
United Cup2 – 11 Jan10
Davis Cup Finals24 – 29 Nov6
Laver Cup25 – 27 Sep3

Open: 2027 dates aren’t published yet — the chart shows 2026. Send me the 2027 window and I’ll redraw it.

■ Chart B

Career high, and where they are now.

The top three men and three women from each 2026 roster — the shape every team carries in 2027 — sorted by career high. The yellow dot is the career high; the open dot is where they stand today. Names in yellow are the players who came straight out of college. Turn on the MVP race to add a second scale: where each player finished inside the league, which is a different order entirely. The orange rule is where tennis starts paying for itself — and every ranked player here is on the wrong side of it today.

Main draw · top 128 Challenger · 129–350 ITF Futures · 351–900 Beyond · 900+ Men no coach · 336 BREAK-EVEN · ~150 with coach Kevin King — now #1601 Kevin King — career high #162 Kevin King Roberto Cid — now #1340 Roberto Cid — career high #211 Roberto Cid Fabrice Martin — career high #228; no current singles ranking Fabrice Martin Karue Sell — now #1755 Karue Sell — career high #258 Karue Sell Elmar Ejupovic — now #915 Elmar Ejupovic — career high #273 Elmar Ejupovic Benjamin Lock — now #943 Benjamin Lock — career high #309 Benjamin Lock Juan Carlos Aguilar — now #1393 Juan Carlos Aguilar — career high #409 Juan Carlos Aguilar Felix Corwin — now #862 Felix Corwin — career high #478 Felix Corwin Ewen Lumsden — now #1472 Ewen Lumsden — career high #585 Ewen Lumsden Blu Baker — now #1190 Blu Baker — career high #608 Blu Baker Noah Schachter — now #1094 Noah Schachter — career high #654 Noah Schachter Jesse Flores — now #873 Jesse Flores — career high #759 Jesse Flores Finn Murgett — now #1028 Finn Murgett — career high #796 Finn Murgett Tyler Stice — now #1658 Tyler Stice — career high #826 Tyler Stice William Bushamuka — now #1863 William Bushamuka — career high #904 William Bushamuka Alex Kuperstein — now #1038 Alex Kuperstein — career high #925 Alex Kuperstein Brandon Perez — now #1824 Brandon Perez — career high #970 Brandon Perez John Chin — now #1671 John Chin — career high #1005 ■ John Chin Joao Ceolin — now #1129 Joao Ceolin — career high #1038 Joao Ceolin Jamie Connel — now #1254 Jamie Connel — career high #1124 ■ Jamie Connel Raul Garcia — now #1679 Raul Garcia — career high #1248 Raul Garcia Oren Vasser — now #2288 Oren Vasser — career high #1360 Oren Vasser Youcef Rihane — now #1689 Youcef Rihane — career high #1461 Youcef Rihane Rafael Marques da Silva — now #1605 Rafael Marques da Silva — career high #1600 Rafael Marques da Silva Isaac Nortey — now #2203 Isaac Nortey — career high #1696 Isaac Nortey Will Nolan — now #2280 Will Nolan — career high #1782 Will Nolan ■ Corey Craig Sam Nicholson Joaquin Benoit Matthew Terry Ryan Gaskin 50 100 250 500 1000 2000 Main draw · top 128 Challenger · 129–350 ITF Futures · 351–900 Beyond · 900+ Women no coach · 253 BREAK-EVEN · ~150 with coach Aliona Bolsova — now #416 Aliona Bolsova — career high #88 Aliona Bolsova Usue Arconada — now #847 Usue Arconada — career high #130 Usue Arconada Seone Mendez — now #1014 Seone Mendez — career high #198 Seone Mendez Victoria Rodriguez — now #586 Victoria Rodriguez — career high #216 Victoria Rodriguez Sophie Chang — now #1476 Sophie Chang — career high #217 Sophie Chang Alexandra Mueller — career high #280; no current singles ranking Alexandra Mueller Adriana Reami — now #932 Adriana Reami — career high #359 Adriana Reami Dalayna Hewitt — now #579 Dalayna Hewitt — career high #383 Dalayna Hewitt Ema Burgic — now #676 Ema Burgic — career high #466 Ema Burgic Naomi Cheong — now #1184 Naomi Cheong — career high #485 ■ Naomi Cheong Fernanda Navarro — now #619 Fernanda Navarro — career high #534 Fernanda Navarro Carson Tanguilig — now #583 Carson Tanguilig — career high #580 ■ Carson Tanguilig Raphaelle Lacasse — now #773 Raphaelle Lacasse — career high #646 Raphaelle Lacasse Jessica Hinojosa — now #733 Jessica Hinojosa — career high #653 Jessica Hinojosa Rhiann Newborn — now #1474 Rhiann Newborn — career high #688 Rhiann Newborn Sabastiani Leon — now #913 Sabastiani Leon — career high #699 Sabastiani Leon Solymar Colling — now #992 Solymar Colling — career high #714 Solymar Colling Jamilah Snells — now #1031 Jamilah Snells — career high #792 ■ Jamilah Snells Brandy Walker — now #1248 Brandy Walker — career high #864 Brandy Walker Kianah Motosono — now #1332 Kianah Motosono — career high #1103 Kianah Motosono Tatiana Sasnouskaya — now #1559 Tatiana Sasnouskaya — career high #1273 Tatiana Sasnouskaya Sofia Cabezas Malkia Ngounoue Carly Briggs Samantha Alicea 50 100 250 500 1000 2000
Career high September 2026 MVP race ↗ (second scale) alone = no tour ranking, placed by MVP standing Name in yellow = straight from college
Rounds 1–3 of the 2026 draft, plus three players the draft board leaves out altogether and one fourth-round pick: 56 in all. Forty-seven carry an ATP or WTA career high. The nine below the dotted line in each panel have no tour ranking on record and are placed by where they finished in the league’s own MVP race — among them Sofia Cabezas, fifth in that race, and Corey Craig, thirteenth, straight out of Florida State. Two more carry a career high but no current singles ranking, so they show a career-high dot alone. Fourth-round picks are otherwise excluded — 2027 rosters are three women and three men. The one exception is John Chin, 19th of 31 men over four Arcs, ahead of eight higher picks including two first-rounders. A player placed by MVP standing needs more than one Arc behind the number: Season Score is the sum of a player’s best six rounds divided by six, so a single appearance is not a season. Ranking axis runs worst to best, left to right, as in the UTR chart below. The MVP race is a separate scale, and it stops at our own best-ranked player rather than running the width of the chart — it ranks these players against each other inside the league, not against the tour. Aliona Bolsova sits inside that line on both counts: a career high of 88, inside a Grand Slam draw, and first in the 2026 MVP race. A career high is never drawn worse than the player’s current ranking: where a recorded best is stale, the best is at least today’s rank and the two collapse to a single point. Tier cut-offs: main draw top 128 — the draw size of a Grand Slam — Challenger 129–350, ITF Futures 351–900 (the ITF renamed the Futures circuit the World Tennis Tour in 2019). The orange rule is the break-even ranking — where prize money covers the cost of competing. It is drawn at ~150, which is where a peer-reviewed 2026 study puts it once a realistic cost base including a coach is counted — and every professional has a coach. The faint rule behind it is the ITF’s own 2013 figure, 336 for men and 253 for women, which sits at a worse ranking only because those costs exclude coaching and all support-team expense. It is the bar nobody actually competes under. Against the real bar: of the 26 men here with a career high, all 26 never reached 150; of 21 women, 19 never did — the exceptions are Aliona Bolsova at 88 and Usue Arconada at 130. On today’s rankings it is unanimous: 25 of 25 ranked men and 20 of 20 ranked women sit outside break-even. Sources: draft.intennse.com, stats.intennse.com MVP race, intennse.com player pages, Tennis Abstract, retrieved 20–21 September 2026; ITF Pro Circuit Review, Stage One: Data Analysis, December 2014; Schöttl et al., Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 29 June 2026.
What the blue diamonds show, and the caveats

Rank on tour did not decide rank in the league. The rows are sorted by career-high ranking, so if tour level carried over, the blue diamonds would fall in a neat diagonal. They don’t. Raul Garcia, whose career high is #1248, finished second in the MVP race among the men here; Carson Tanguilig, career high #580, finished second among the women. Several of the strongest tour résumés finished mid-table.

The second scale is the league’s published MVP race, whose season score is the average of each player’s best six completed rounds out of eight — so a big night in a single Arc can’t carry anyone. Players are ranked only against the others on this chart; four of the 39 didn’t complete enough rounds to appear in the race, and so carry no diamond.

This chart covers the 60 players taken in rounds 1–3 — three men and three women per team, which is the roster shape from 2027 onward. Of those, 39 have both a career high and a current ranking; the rest have never held a professional ranking at all. Across the full 80-player roster, 24 have never been ranked — checked against a full index of 79,580 ranked players, so that is a finding rather than a gap in the data.

Career highs run from #88 (Aliona Bolsova) to #1906, with a median of #671. One player has been inside the top 100; thirteen have been inside the top 300.

Five of these sixty came straight from a college program at 23 or younger — Carson Tanguilig (North Carolina), Naomi Cheong (USC), Jamilah Snells (Louisville), Jamie Connel (Florida State) and Ellie Schulson (Furman). Their names are in yellow. Six more were drafted in round four, including Kate Sharabura, the Georgia Tech All-American who played for Team Tampa in 2025.

Only 8 players have a true 2026 season high on the public record, so the open dot is each player’s current ranking in September 2026. A real season-high for everyone needs week-by-week ranking history — or our own draft board.

Open: the draft board carries proSglBest and utrBest for all 160 drafted players. One export turns every estimate on this page into the league’s own numbers.

■ Chart C

UTR: our players against the tour’s.

The same argument in the rating system that covers everyone, professional or not. Our players sit at ITF level and just below Challenger — the band the tour cannot absorb.

Men n=28 top-three picks ITF World Tennis Tour (men) — UTR 13.38–14.33 ITF Futures · 351–900 13.38–14.33 ATP Challenger — UTR 14.28–15.59 Challenger · 101–350 14.28–15.59 ATP main-tour main draw — UTR 15.41–16.07 Main draw · top 100 15.41–16.07 Median 13.20 Juan Bianchi — UTR 12.4 Brandon Perez — UTR 12.4 William Bushamuka — UTR 12.5 Isaac Nortey — UTR 12.5 Raul Garcia — UTR 12.6 William Nolan — UTR 12.7 Samuel Nicholson — UTR 12.8 Matthew Terry — UTR 12.8 Oren Vasser — UTR 12.8 Jesse Flores — UTR 12.9 Noah Schachter — UTR 12.9 Rafael Marques Da Silva — UTR 13.0 Tyler Stice — UTR 13.0 Ewen Lumsden — UTR 13.1 Juan Carlos Aguilar — UTR 13.3 Jamie Connel — UTR 13.3 · straight from college Joao Vitor Goncalves Ceolin — UTR 13.3 Alex Kuperstein — UTR 13.3 Finn Murgett — UTR 13.3 Blu Baker — UTR 13.4 Felix Corwin — UTR 13.4 Alafia Ayeni — UTR 13.5 Kevin King — UTR 13.5 Benjamin Lock — UTR 13.5 Elmar Ejupovic — UTR 13.6 Youcef Rihane — UTR 13.6 Roberto Cid — UTR 13.9 Karue Sell — UTR 13.9 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Women n=30 top-three picks ITF World Tennis Tour (women) — UTR 10.52–11.67 ITF Futures · 351–900 10.52–11.67 WTA 125 / Challenger — UTR 11.22–12.08 WTA 125 · 101–350 11.22–12.08 WTA main-tour main draw — UTR 12.18–12.92 Main draw · top 100 12.18–12.92 Median 10.60 Kianah Motosono — UTR 9.4 Samantha Alicea — UTR 9.6 Ellie Schulson — UTR 9.6 · straight from college Sabastiani Leon — UTR 9.7 Brandy Walker — UTR 9.7 Rhiann Newborn — UTR 10.0 Seone Mendez — UTR 10.1 Jamilah Snells — UTR 10.1 · straight from college Annabelle Thomas — UTR 10.1 Solymar Colling — UTR 10.2 Jessica Hinojosa — UTR 10.2 Naomi Cheong — UTR 10.3 · straight from college Alexandra Mueller — UTR 10.3 Malkia Ngounoue — UTR 10.3 Carly Briggs — UTR 10.6 Sophie Chang — UTR 10.6 Raphaelle Lacasse — UTR 10.6 Maria Fernanda Navarro Oliva — UTR 10.6 Adriana Reami — UTR 10.6 Sofia Johnson — UTR 10.7 Tatiana Sasnouskaya — UTR 10.7 Carson Tanguilig — UTR 10.7 · straight from college Frances Altick — UTR 10.8 Sydni Ratliff — UTR 10.8 Victoria Rodriguez — UTR 10.8 Ema Burgic — UTR 10.9 Dalayna Hewitt — UTR 11.0 Sofia Cabezas — UTR 11.2 Usue Arconada — UTR 11.4 Aliona Bolsova Zadoinov — UTR 11.4 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 UTR rating → men and women on separate scales
INTENNSE player Straight from collegeTop three picks per team Tour band (10th–90th percentile)
Bands derived from 286 players who publish both a UTR rating and an ATP/WTA ranking, taken at the 10th–90th percentile of each tier. INTENNSE ratings: the top three men and three women per 2026 roster — 28 men and 30 women carry a rating on the league’s own draft board. Source: draft.intennse.com players board, retrieved 20 September 2026.
How the bands were built

Rather than cite someone’s rule of thumb, the bands come from UTR’s own data: 286 players who carry both a published rating and their tour ranking on the same record, grouped by ranking tier and cut at the 10th and 90th percentiles. The curve is cleanly monotonic from ITF to Challenger to main draw, which is itself a check that it is real.

The ITF band is the Futures circuit — renamed the World Tennis Tour in 2019, but the same M15/M25 and W15/W35 events. The league’s draft board also carries each player’s World Tennis Number, so a WTN version of this chart is possible; UTR is used here because the tour bands are derived from real UTR-and-ranking pairs, and because UTR is the number college and agency audiences read fluently.

Men’s and women’s UTR are not comparable — the scales sit about three points apart — so the chart is split by gender and never mixes them.

These are the league’s own numbers, limited to the top three picks of each gender per team. Medians for that group: 13.20 for the men and 10.60 for the women, against career-best medians of 13.60 and 11.20. Including fourth-round picks pulls both figures down — 12.85 and 10.25 — which is why the chart shows the roster shape the league actually carries from 2027.

Open: the two college bands are still off this chart — a real “top college” band needs in-season college UTRs, not our players’ post-college ratings. The draft board also carries WTN and doubles ratings if either is worth a chart.

■ Chart D

One player. One season. Sixty-three thousand kilometres.

Aliona Bolsova won our 2026 MVP race. This is what the year before it cost her in distance — her actual 2025 schedule, every venue geocoded, every leg measured. The line steps up each time she flew. It is the first figure of its kind we can find for any tennis player at any level: no air-miles number for the sport exists in the published literature.

0k 10k 20k 30k 40k 50k 60k Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Australian Open (Q) — flew (16,779 km, running total 16,779 km) W35 Palm Coast — flew (15,689 km, running total 32,468 km) Cancun 125 — flew (1,091 km, running total 33,560 km) W35 Terrassa — flew (8,375 km, running total 41,935 km) La Bisbal 125 — ground (96 km, running total 41,935 km) W100 Zaragoza — ground (329 km, running total 41,935 km) W100 Madrid — ground (274 km, running total 41,935 km) Vic 125 — ground (526 km, running total 41,935 km) W35 Platja d'Aro — ground (69 km, running total 41,935 km) Rabat — flew (1,226 km, running total 43,161 km) W100 Biarritz — flew (1,147 km, running total 44,308 km) W75 Blois — ground (509 km, running total 44,308 km) W35 Perigueux — ground (271 km, running total 44,308 km) Contrexeville 125 — ground (517 km, running total 44,308 km) Iasi — flew (1,623 km, running total 45,931 km) W100 Gran Canaria — flew (4,268 km, running total 50,198 km) W75 Kursumlijska — flew (3,673 km, running total 53,871 km) Montreux 125 — flew (1,191 km, running total 55,062 km) San Sebastian 125 — flew (781 km, running total 55,843 km) W35 Reus — ground (350 km, running total 55,843 km) Cosenza 125 — flew (1,300 km, running total 57,143 km) W100 Les Franqueses — flew (1,204 km, running total 58,347 km) Rovereto 125 — flew (844 km, running total 59,191 km) W35 Loule — flew (1,855 km, running total 61,046 km) W35 Faro — ground (16 km, running total 61,046 km) Angers 125 — flew (1,311 km, running total 62,357 km) Girona → Melbourne → Palm Coast 32,468 km. Three matches. One win. 63,023 km flown 26 events · 17 flights · 56 matches Bolsova, 2025 14,747 km — a season at one venue: two flights, then nothing Ours
Twenty-six events in nine countries across three continents. Great-circle distance between consecutive venues, which understates flown distance — real routings run 10–25 per cent longer, and a forced hub connection adds more. Legs under 600 km are treated as ground travel and excluded from the flown total; the Spanish clusters are drivable and she is Catalan. The comparison bar is Girona to Atlanta and back — note that the fair comparison is per event entered (2,424 km on tour, zero marginal here), not a naive eight-week total: in her actual June–August 2025 window her events clustered in Europe and she flew only 8,149 km. Match log: Tennis Abstract, retrieved 22 September 2026. Venues geocoded via OpenStreetMap Nominatim.

■ Chart E

What a player is actually exposed to.

Flights as a share of the annual cost of competing, on the ITF’s own published fare matrix. This is the line that moves when fuel moves — and it is the only line where playing in one place makes a real difference. Accommodation and food do not go away when the venue stops moving.

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% Tour player, South America — 33% Tour player, South America 33% $14,202 of flights Tour player, Asia — 30% Tour player, Asia 30% $11,973 of flights Tour player, Africa — 27% Tour player, Africa 27% $10,630 of flights Tour player, Europe — 19% Tour player, Europe 19% $7,858 — Aliona Bolsova’s actual 2025 legs INTENNSE, US-based player — 2% INTENNSE, US-based player 2% $176 — one domestic round trip, all season
ITF Pro Circuit Review, Stage One: Data Analysis, December 2014, Appendix 3 — region-to-region flight costs, ranking band 251–500, against the same document’s total annual expense by region. Intra-North-America is $87.82 a leg; Europe to Oceania is $1,755.10. The cheapest professional tennis in the world to travel to is American tennis played in America. Figures are 2013–14 dollars and are not inflated. Be precise about what this shows: total cost per week falls only about four per cent — it is the fuel-exposed fraction that falls by a factor of ten. INTENNSE does not house players.

■ Chart F

What losing in the first round pays.

Current official rates, from this season’s regulations. A player who loses in qualifying earns nothing and has paid up to forty dollars for the privilege. The bars are linear and to scale — the slivers are the point.

Lose in qualifying, M15 / W15 — $0 Lose in qualifying, M15 / W15 $0 — and you paid up to $40 to enter Lose the first round, W15 — $147 Lose the first round, W15 $147 gross, before tax Lose the first round, M15 — $156 Lose the first round, M15 $156 gross, before tax Lose the first round, W100 — $926 Lose the first round, W100 $926 the top of the ITF ladder Win an M15, outright — $2,160 Win an M15, outright $2,160 seven matches Win a W100, outright — $15,239 Win a W100, outright $15,239 the best week on the circuit $40,000 base — INTENNSE, guaranteed, for an eight-week season Ours
2026 ITF World Tennis Tour Regulations, dated 12 December 2025, Appendices H (men) and J (women), singles, 32-draw. Entry fees of up to US$40 per draw are payable by every player, qualifying included. Prize money is quoted gross: income tax is withheld at source at a rate that varies by host country, and accommodation is the player’s own unless the event offers hospitality — which, where it exists, is a shared twin room for three to seven nights. Women’s prize pools are further top-sliced by the PHCP fee, $300 to $5,000 an event, to fund the players’ own on-site healthcare. The ITF’s own 2013 data: of 13,736 ranked professionals, 6,108 — 44.5 per cent — earned no prize money at all.

■ Chart G

The cost that does not show up on court.

Fifty-two WTA players, tracked on WHOOP. Every hour of time-zone difference costs eleven minutes of sleep on the first night after travel, and going east costs another twenty-five on top. The players absorb it privately — by arriving days early, at their own expense.

−0 min −30 min −60 min −90 min −120 min 0 2 4 6 8 Hours of time-zone difference Any direction — −11.3 min per hour Eastward — a further −24.5 min A two-hour eastward shift puts first-night sleep under seven hours
Maynard et al., Sports Health 18(1), 2026, doi:10.1177/19417381251387717 — 52 professional WTA players. Read the study’s own null before using this: it found no significant correlation between sleep disruption and competition performance, and the authors explain why — players “arrive at competition locations with enough time to resynchronize their circadian rhythm.” That explanation is the point. The cost is real and it is latent: it is paid in extra nights, extra flights and elevated illness risk rather than in visible results. The counter-evidence is strong and worth knowing — a 960-game NFL study and a 681-injury NBA study both found no association between travel and injury.