Tennis Podcasts

I’m a huge fan of tennis. Following sleeping, eating, the opposite sex, music and online business, is tennis in my list of my all-time favourite things (try singing that to the sound of music favourite things theme song!). At the moment the US Open is on and I’ve been eagerly following the updates and listening to the streaming web radio since the television coverage is usually around when I’m sleeping (note the hierachy of favourite things for order of precedence here).

I was pleasantly surprised to see tha the US Open website is offering podcasts for download from their site.

A new feature from USOpen.org in 2005, we’ll bring you three audio updates each day that you can download on your personal audio device. These updates will let you know what’s going on with the top stars and main courts, but we’ll pay close attention to the outer courts, the players and amazing matches you might not know as much about. A “must have” for all tennis fans.

[ Download Podcasts ]

While not “proper” podcasts in a traditionalist sense because there is no RSS feed to subscribe to, the fact that they are labelling them as podcasts is a good step towards mainstreaming the term and technology. There will be a lot of people introduced to podcasts for the first time from the USOpen.com site and may consequently start to look around the web for more. The US Open could have simply labelled them MP3 audio downloads (well they do that too, but podast is how they advertise the service) if they were worried about confusing people so I think they deserve some back slapping for helping the cause.

I’m always happy to see tennis leading the way