Tennis Scorebooks - Which One Will You Love

I get a lot of questions about tennis scorebooks.  Most coaches in the know are looking for the Wirtanen tennis scorebook and who could blame them as this book is like royalty among tennis enthusiasts.  That being said I know of a couple of other options that sell very well and are quite popular.

Let's take a quick look inside of three major tennis scorebooks and see what each has to offer.  I will explain the differences between the Wirtanen tennis scorebook, the Glovers Short Form tennis scorebook and Accuscore Official tennis scorebook.

Behind the green cover of this coveted tennis scorebook is something I have never seen in any other scorebook.  A story about an athlete and his coach.  I'm going to provide an exact copy of that story below as it is the story behind the development of this scorebook.

Taken from the Wirtanen Tennis Scorebook page 1...

"    The name WIRTANEN on the cover of this scorebook is in memory of John Wirtanen whom Paul Bouchard coached while at Greenway High School, Coleraine, Minnesota.  John began playing tennis in the ninth grade.  After only two year of competitions, and with 02 schools competing, John led his high school team to an undefeated season as well as leading it to the state team championship in the spring of 1961.  John Wirtanen teamed with Jim Miller to win the State Doubles Championships that same spring.  What was unusual about this situation was not only the winning of the state championship in two years, but that in the 60 year history of high school tennis in Minnesota, this was the first and only time that a team from Northern Minnesota had ever won a State Tennis Championship.

    Following his high school career, John enrolled at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota where he was instrumental in leading Hamline to three consecutive Minnesota State College Championships.  In his senior year at Hamline, John discovered that he had cancer.  John never gave up and never once felt sorry for himself.  He fought to the end of his short life.  John passed away on September 7, 1969 at the age of 22.  It is in memory of John that this book has been published.  In education, many teachers and coaches come in contact with outstanding young individuals whom they never forget.  For Paul Bouchard, John Wirtanen will never be forgotten."

I thought the above was worth passing around to even those who don't buy the book.

Now I do highly recommend this book.  It features a superior quality cover like that of a hard cover novel.  In fact the cover is so stiff that you will not need additional support when writing.  You can write neatly into this book without worry that it will flex suddenly.  The next page of he book shows a sample page filled out.  Flip the page and you'll find a team record and schedule page and adjacent to that is a weekly schedule page.  Flip the page one more time and your ready to keep score.  The top of this page is titled "Tennis Score Sheet"  There is a column for Home Team and column for Opponents followed by Winner, Set1, Set2, Set3.  You get 6 singles lines with 1 extra line and 3 doubles lines with 1 extra.  Each score page features a Team Records box with All Matches and Conference tables.  There is a Final Score section and lastly an information box with spaces for Site, Date, Weather, Opposing Coach, Court Surface and Remarks.

The adjacent page is Match Notes with weakness and strength lines as well as grade line for each match.  Finally you find a Team Summay of Opponents.  There are 30 sets of these pages.

After scoring pages you will find a page with generous tables for Individual Player Results and Tournament Achievements.  This page is followed by 10 pages with tables for Individual Player Records.  Next you get 12 pages of tournament charts to use followed by a Match Report Form, Tennis Team Roster page and last but not least a Tennis Season Summary Page.

The Wirtanen Tennis Scorebook is full of everything you need to keep score and statistics for your team.  If you looking for the best you'll find it here.

The Glovers short form tennis scorebook is also a fantastic book.  At first glance you'll see that it features a very durable plastic cover in color light blue.  In addition to this water proof cover you'll notice a very thick spiral binding that can take a beating.  The first page of the books is  titled " Glovers Tennis Directory" and it gives spaces for all your players contact information, your school information and coaches information.  Turn the page and you find 2 full pages of scoring instruction in the form of example pages.  After a quick review you'll be ready to go.

From there you head straight into scoring pages.  There are two pages for each meet.  The left hand page is the Score Sheet and the right hand page is the Match summary.  You get 6 lines for singles matches plus 2 extras and 3 sets of doubles plus 1 extra.  The match summary is straight forward with spaces for final score, strokes, best shot, weak shot, right and left.   You get enough sets of scoring pages to score 30 matches.

At the end of the scoring pages is a page with tables for Team Season Summary and Tournament Results.  Following this page are 12 pages for Player Summaries with tournament results at the bottom for each player. 

The Player Summaries are followed by 12 pages of "Glover's Challenge Charts".  Each page has a Singles Ladder and Doubles Ladder.  Singles has 16 boxes total in a triangular layout and doubles have 6 boxes total in the same type of tournament layout.

The Glover's book if very well laid out and features a bit of an oversized page for more writing space.  The pages are made of thick paper and the cover is very durable plastic.  Definitely a great book.

The Accuscore tennis scorebook looks like all of the other Accuscore books.  Thick card stock cover in a standard 8.5" high x 11" wide format.  Inside the book you first find a note to the scorekeeper which offers general instruction on how to use the book and keep score.  The next page is a Season information page where you can fill in the year, team roster, schedule, and coaches names.  Flip the page and your into the scoring pages.  The layout of this book differs from our previous 2 books and is very open.  The left hand page scores the singles matches and the right hand page scores the doubles.  You get 7 rows for singles and 6 for doubles.  The bottom of the right hand page offers cumulative scoring for the meet and a final team score area.  The very bottom of this page is a couple of lines for comments.  You get 24 sets of these scoring pages.  A little less than the 30 in both the Wirtanen and Glovers but this book is half the price.

The final page of the book is a Season Summary that offers tables for Team Totals, Singles Totals and Doubles Totals.  There are also lines for Team Honors and Single/Double Player Honors.  The back of the Accuscore is even thicker card stock that is stiff enough to offer an ok writing surface.

For a closer look at these books check out my tennis scorebook review review video.

I hope this short article will assist new coaches in picking a scorebook that suits there needs and that experienced coaches who aren't happy with there scorebooks find a better one.  Thanks for reading and be sure to check out more review articles at TeamSportsBlog.com.

You can purchase any of the above scorebooks at The Tennis Scorebook Store.