David Shaftel founded The Second Serve in 2024 as a digital tennis media outlet, closely followed by Open Tennis, a biannual, large-format print magazine, both covering modern tennis. 

David was previously co-founder and editor-in-chief of Racquet magazine, leaving the publication in late 2023. Before working in tennis, Shaftel was a frequent contributor to The New York Times, the Financial Times, Air & Space Smithsonian, and Monocle. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

He tells us more about his Open Tennis as issue three lands in shops.

What are you doing this morning? 
This Monday morning I started by shoveling 24 inches of snow, but that’s not typical. A usual Monday for me starts with coffee–every day does. I have a fancy espresso maker at home and make what I describe as a ‘double cortado,’ which involves four shots of espresso. I drink it from a Kinto travel mug that keeps it warm all morning. 

We are a small staff, and work remotely. My creative partner, also called David, is in LA so I usually like to take advantage of the quiet hours, between 8:00 and 12:00 here in Brooklyn to do creative work, without distraction. I like to also keep calls to the minimum on Mondays so I can have a productive start to the week. My week really starts with our virtual staff meeting at 3:00 pm each Monday. Then it’s on. 

Describe your work environment
My office is also in my home, in the basement, and is full of art that my wife describes as ‘office pieces’—in this case photos by Noah Kalina and Roger Steffens (The Family Acid) and a painting of a house on fire by Andrew Pope. There’s also a print by the Indian poster artist Ravi Varma of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity–no place of business should be without one.

Though there are a lot of books in my office, the bulk of the shelves are mainly comprised of Vitsoe display units, stocked with ephemera and printed matter–any magazines, art books, postcards, zines etc. that I’m feeling at the movement. I always want to be looking at covers of all kinds, since design is the first thing people will notice in our work. 

I have a desk, but it is covered in stacks of books and still more printed matter that I’m trying to absorb. I work in a wooden art deco chair my wife and I brought back from India, where we used to live. My physical therapist says it’s ergonomically problematic.

My office is also home to Hermin, my son’s leopard gecko. He is my workday companion. It’s all a pretty cozy setup, though not much natural light. I keep it nice and toasty for the lizard.

I have a record player, but seem to play the same four records over and over again: You Become the Mountain by Jeffrey Silverstein; Only Life, by the Feelies; Only Built 4 Cuban Linx by Raekown; and Soul Rebels by The Wailers. 

Which magazine do you first remember?
The first magazines I remember subscribing to were Ranger Rick and Boy’s Life, which I think was associated with the Boy Scouts. My son gets Ranger Rick, but it’s not what it used to be—like so many other titles. Later, I got Sports Illustrated and Tennis magazine, both in their heyday.

I loved Thursdays when SI was delivered, and looked forward to checking the player rankings in the back of Tennis Magazine as soon as it fell through the mail slot. (I hope Open Tennis pushes the same buttons as the old Tennis magazine in its heyday.) BMX Plus and BMX Action gave me my first taste of niche sports magazines, when I was about 11 years old.

Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine? 
I have to mention Thrasher. I’m not a skater or a reader but of all the magazines it probably best serves as a focal point for its community of readers and skaters. If you see someone in a Thrasher shirt, you immediately know so much about them. Its logo is iconic, practically a uniform for skateboarders.

I live in New York and we’re lucky to have three great local publications: New York magazine, the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine/T Magazine. We’re spoiled.

I love Popeye magazine–who doesn’t? It’s a great combination of beguiling and comprehensive, with great design that suggests it was put together by a huge team executing their part of the brief to perfection, like Esquire in the 1960s. I also love any niche title that has a clear mandate and well defined mission, like Cherry Bomb—which covers women in the food industry—and Rolling Heavy, a little magazine about van life based on the old, saucy Easy Rider motorcycle magazine. It knows exactly what it is. 


What other piece of media would you recommend?
I’d recommend books. Actual books. I’ve always loved to read, but in recent years as my attention span became shorter (due to the algorithm, I suppose) I’ve had to retrain myself to read books prolifically. I start every day by reading a few pages. It gets the momentum going. I prefer non-fiction, but have been making an effort to work in some fiction. 

Describe Open Tennis in three words
Pure, Original Tennis. 

That’s one of our taglines. I hope it communicates that The Second Serve and Open Tennis are places where you'll find new perspectives on tennis, freed from the constraints of traditional sports reporting and sports photography, which feels formulaic. To me, it means readers won’t encounter any sort of pivot to AI, disposable digital “content” or clickbait other faddish racquet sports. Often that means that the writers, photographer and artists are foremost the stars of the publication, more so than the players or the game. 

What did you learn from your previous project Racquet that you brought to Open Tennis? 
Mainly what I learned was how to make a magazine. When I started editing Racquet, I couldn't even generate a pdf in InDesign. Slowly, over the 23 editions of Racquet that I edited, I learned elements of, if not actual graphic design, then magazine layout. Fast forward to now: I still work with a talented editorial and graphic designer, but in a pinch I could design the magazine myself.

We have five people working on the magazine now: Myself, the aforementioned designer, a copyeditor and a genius post-producer, who makes the images look great. It’s the same team who I worked with at Racquet, with the addition of my colleague David, who also came over from Racquet and works on magazine layouts now (in addition to 10,000 other things). I’ve learned that you don’t need a huge staff, just talented people who can do lots of different things. And if your staff comes from newspapers, it’s possible to do things very quickly. There is definitely an efficiency associated with a small team. 

One thing about making a magazine is that you can’t really make any drastic stylistic changes from issue to issue. Unless you redesign, you’re kind of stuck with your established visual elements. When I started Open Tennis, it was fun to get to make all of those choices anew, from editorial bent to fonts, bindings, paper weight, size, etc. 


In today’s multimedia world of tennis coverage, what can a print magazine offer the sport that’s unique?
Publishing print magazines can feel anachronistic, but that is kind of the point. Much digital coverage, especially ‘content’ feels ephemeral—it’s gone in a flash. Print magazines offer not just a reflection of the culture at any given moment in time, but also can serve as a refuge for people feeling alienated by the onslaught of digital culture. And they unite seemingly disparate elements of the culture. They are tastemakers. 

Outline the relationship between Open Tennis and online platform Second Serve
The Second Serve is our hub for digital tennis coverage, and produces a weekly newsletter packed with loads of information about what’s going on in pro tennis and in tennis culture, as well as anywhere from 2-5 original web stories per week. It’s also home to our e-store. OpenTennis is the print magazine of The Second Serve. I like to think of it as a similar relationship T Magazine has to the New York Times. The magazine is more visually-oriented, more adventurous and occasionally esoteric. 

Highlight one story that sums up how your magazine works, and explain why you selected it 
I’m not sure if it sums up how we work, but I love a spread we have called ‘On Tour,’ above, which functions like the bold face names pages in old Vanity Fairs. My colleague David assembles it, and it includes a lot of his original photography but also shows what we’ve been up to between issues. In one spread, it encapsulates everything we’re into. 

What has publishing issue one taught you that may be helpful to anybody else planning to make their own magazine?
I always say, if you’re going to launch a magazine make sure the first one is good. It might be the only one you get to do. Actually, Jeremy, that’s what you always say! At least that’s what you told me when I asked for your advice before launching Racquet and it was great advice that I have passed on dozens of times. (Bonus advice: involve fresh eyes in the proofreading process.) 


What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
The weekend. I want to take my kids skiing in all this fresh snow! That and the publication of our newsletter on Friday. I love the newsletter because no matter what goes on during the week, we always end by publishing new work, putting something new into the world. I never feel like any given week was wasted.

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