Blair Henley on getting the best out of players virtually and inside the stadium

"It’s those times where you’re sort of sitting there figuring out what can we do to make the most of this tournament in terms of publicizing our sport? It's just finding the different avenues to tell people about our game."

Though a lot of focus has been on the players and all of the obstacles they’ve had to endure this past month and year, reporters like this week's guest Blair Henley have had to adjust, too. Henley is a recognizable face on the tour as one of the top digital media creators and stadium hosts out there.

After her own playing career wrapped up at Rice University, Henley got her start making instructional videos for Tennis Now and writing for outlets like TENNIS Magazine. Since 2015, she has been a stadium host at some of the most popular calendar stops like the US Open, Cincinnati, Indian Wells and Delray Beach.

Her job is to put the players, and the tournaments, on the map. She tells us all about her career and what it has been like to get quality time with big names like Roger Federer while building relationships with new faces like Coco Gauff and Sebastian Korda. 

To start of the year, she was one fate lucky few on site at Delray Beach. Then during the Austrian Open swing, she did online interviews called “Quarantine Chronicles” with Victoria Azarenka, Stefanos Tsitsitpas and Rajeev Ram for her YouTube channel. 

She explains how her work has been impacted by the pandemic, though it hasn’t been all bad: Zoom has made reporting and content creation possible from anywhere in the world.

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