There was a period when following international tennis online meant moving between specialist sports sites, forums, news archives and individual tournament reports rather than simply opening an app. South Africa had its own place in that early online tennis landscape through Super Tennis, and traces of that history can still be found scattered across the web today.
The surviving links to Super Tennis are particularly interesting because they provide a snapshot of what the site covered and how widely its stories travelled. References remain on tennis databases, international sports sites, discussion forums and archived news pages, some dating back two decades.
Covering the international tennis circuit
One of the clearest surviving references comes from QuickSports, where a page covering the 2007 US Open women’s singles results linked directly to a Super Tennis story.
That link is a reminder that Super Tennis wasn’t restricted to domestic South African tennis. Its archive included major international tournaments and players, with surviving backlinks pointing to coverage of the US Open, French Open, ATP Tour, WTA Tour and Fed Cup.
Another example appears on SportsFilter, whose May 2006 archive linked to a Super Tennis report discussing Martina Hingis and her attempt to capture the French Open title that had previously eluded her.
The site’s Grand Slam coverage also found its way onto much larger international sports publications. A 2006 Deadspin article covering Maria Sharapova’s US Open victory over Justine Henin-Hardenne linked directly to Super Tennis for the match result.
Tennis stories travelling around the world
Perhaps the most revealing part of the old Super Tennis backlink profile is how international it became.
The Croatian community site Croatian World Network credited Super Tennis as a source for a story about Croatian stars Goran Ivanišević and Ivan Ljubičić playing for children.
A completely different example survives on Cyprus Forum, where a discussion about Marcos Baghdatis reaching the quarter-finals at Indian Wells referenced a Super Tennis ATP article.
Elsewhere, the enormous old web directory Geometry.Net linked to Super Tennis reporting concerning ATP action in Beijing.
Even general news aggregation sites picked up its material. An archived 2007 page at InfoPig contains a link to Super Tennis coverage filed under its Fed Cup section.
Together these references show how sports reporting moved around the early web. A tennis story published for one audience could quickly become a source for a forum conversation, international community website, news database or sports archive somewhere else entirely.
South Africa on the international tennis map
Super Tennis also appears in several directories that treated the website as a destination for information about South African tennis itself.
ScoreWeb’s tennis links directory listed Super Tennis under South Africa alongside tennis resources representing countries including New Zealand, Paraguay, the United States and Venezuela.
The German sports reference site Sport-Komplett also included the Super Tennis web address in its international tennis association listings.
Likewise, Greek Travel Pages included a South African Tennis Association directory entry linking directly to Super Tennis.
And on the Olympics-focused resource Travel Notes, Super Tennis appears among resources connected with Olympic tennis.
These aren’t simply references to individual news stories. They show that other websites regarded Super Tennis itself as a useful South African tennis destination.
When tennis news became part of wider conversations
Some of the most interesting backlinks have little to do with conventional sports directories.
The blog Rant Your Head Off, for example, cited Super Tennis while discussing a controversy surrounding the French Open. Rather than simply reporting a score, the post used Super Tennis reporting as part of a broader discussion.
That kind of link demonstrates an important characteristic of sports publishing. Tennis isn’t isolated from the rest of the world. Money, politics, sponsorship, player behaviour, tournament organisation and culture regularly turn a match or tournament into a much larger story.
Super Tennis material became part of those conversations.
The web remembers longer than we think
Some websites disappear almost completely. Others leave footprints everywhere.
Super Tennis falls into the second category.
Old links remain embedded inside tournament archives, international directories, tennis discussions and sports articles. Even modern website-analysis services such as SitePrice continue to surface Super Tennis in their databases.
Individually, an old backlink might not seem particularly significant. Collectively, however, these links reconstruct part of the site’s history.
They show Super Tennis covering major tournaments, ATP and WTA players, Davis and Fed Cup-era international tennis, South African tennis organisations and stories that were interesting enough for publishers around the world to reference.
That is one of the strange advantages of publishing on the internet: an article may disappear from the front page after a day, but references to it can survive for decades.
For Super Tennis, those surviving links provide something close to a digital archaeological record of South African tennis publishing on the early web.
And now, as Super Tennis moves forward again, that old network of links is more than an SEO curiosity. It is evidence that the name already has a history online — one stretching from South Africa to Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, the United States and beyond.
The technology surrounding tennis publishing has changed dramatically since many of those links were created. The fundamental attraction of the sport has not. There are still matches to analyse, personalities to follow, rivalries to argue about and unexpected stories unfolding every week.
That gives Super Tennis something valuable to build on: not merely a domain name, but a web history that never completely disappeared.