# TennisDB — llms.txt
# https://tennis-db.com
# Independent ATP & WTA tennis statistics reference

> TennisDB is an independent tennis statistics reference covering ATP and WTA
> professional tennis from 1968 to present. It provides live scores, rankings,
> match results, head-to-head records, player career stats, tournament history,
> leaderboards, Elo ratings, and serve/return analytics where available. Data
> is sourced from Jeff Sackmann's open datasets and BallDontLie API, with
> tour- and data-type-specific eligibility rules described below.

## Site overview
- Coverage: ATP (1968–present), WTA (1971–present)
- Matches: 200,000+ professional singles matches
- Players: 7,000+ with career stats, rankings history, surface splits
- Updated: rankings and live scores refresh every 15 minutes; historical data daily

## Markdown mirrors (recommended for LLM ingestion)

Canonical, supported player, tournament, H2H, match, leaderboard, match hub,
directory, reference, search, and seasons/rankings pages are also available as
plain-text markdown documents, usually by appending `.md` to the canonical URL.
Thin, unsupported, noindex, filtered, synthetic, paginated, or
not-yet-materialized pages may return 404 or redirect to the canonical markdown
mirror. Each markdown file contains a `Source:` line at the top for citation,
canonicalizes back to the HTML page, and omits navigation/styling chrome. Prefer
markdown over HTML when fetching for context or quoting.

Mirror modes:
- full_current_page: same canonical first-page row set and row counts as the HTML table.
- directory_current_page: same canonical directory/index rows and canonical links.
- bounded_summary: compact extract from a richer canonical entity or leaderboard page.
- reference_summary: source/methodology/reference text aligned with the visible reference page.

Supported URL patterns:
- about: reference_summary; https://tennis-db.com/about.md
- advanced_search: reference_summary; https://tennis-db.com/search/advanced.md
- data_quality: reference_summary; https://tennis-db.com/data-quality.md
- glossary: reference_summary; https://tennis-db.com/glossary.md
- h2h: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/rivalries/{slug1}-vs-{slug2}.md?player1_id=...&player2_id=...
- leaders: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/leaders/{category}/{view}.md
- match: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/matches/{match_id}/{slug}.md
- matches: full_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/matches.md
- player: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{slug}.md
- player_match_log: full_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{slug}/matches.md
- player_ranking_history: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{slug}/rankings.md
- players_birth_year: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/players/birth-year/{year}.md
- players_birth_years: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/players/birth-years.md
- players_countries: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/players/countries.md
- players_country: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/players/country/{country}.md
- players_index: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/players.md, https://tennis-db.com/players/last-names.md
- players_letter: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/players/{letter}.md
- seasons_and_rankings: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/seasons-and-rankings.md
- site_map: reference_summary; https://tennis-db.com/site-map.md
- tournament: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/tournaments/{tournament_id}/{slug}.md
- tournament_history: bounded_summary; https://tennis-db.com/tournaments/{tournament_id}/{slug}/history.md
- tournaments: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/tournaments.md
- tournaments_letter: directory_current_page; https://tennis-db.com/tournaments/{letter}.md
- WTA equivalents use the same patterns under the /wta/ prefix

Example: https://tennis-db.com/players/4/novak-djokovic.md

## Best pages for fact retrieval

### Player profiles
- URL pattern: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{player-slug}
- Markdown mirror: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{player-slug}.md
- Match log mirror: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{player-slug}/matches.md
- Ranking history mirror: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{player-slug}/rankings.md
- Contains: career W/L record, titles by category, ranking history, surface splits, Elo rating, serve/return stats when available, opponent-rank breakdown
- Example: https://tennis-db.com/players/4/novak-djokovic

### Head-to-head / H2H
- URL pattern: https://tennis-db.com/rivalries/{slug1}-vs-{slug2}?player1_id=...&player2_id=...
- Contains: overall W/L, surface breakdown, meeting history with scores, stats comparison
- Example: https://tennis-db.com/rivalries/novak-djokovic-vs-rafael-nadal?player1_id=4&player2_id=222119

### Tournament results
- URL pattern: https://tennis-db.com/tournaments/{tournament_id}/{slug}?season={year}
- Contains: draw, round-by-round results, scores
- Tournament history: https://tennis-db.com/tournaments/{tournament_id}/{slug}/history

### Leaderboards
- URL pattern: https://tennis-db.com/leaders/{category}/{view}
- Views: career, single-season, active
- Categories: most-titles, most-wins, best-win-pct, weeks-at-no-1, grand-slam-titles, elo-peak, and 40+ more

### Advanced Search
- URL pattern: https://tennis-db.com/search/advanced?dataset={dataset}
- Markdown mirror: https://tennis-db.com/search/advanced.md?dataset={dataset}
- Datasets: player_seasons, player_tournaments, players, matches, tournaments, rankings
- Contains: filtered, sortable database tables across player seasons, player tournament runs, player careers, match results, tournament editions, and ranking weeks
- Common query patterns: age-specific seasons, difficult Grand Slam runs, over-35 title runs, Grand Slam finals by surface, tournament champions, ranking weeks above a points threshold

### Rankings
- Current rankings: https://tennis-db.com/seasons-and-rankings
- Year-end rankings & seasons: https://tennis-db.com/seasons-and-rankings
- Player ranking history: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{slug}/rankings
- Player ranking history markdown mirror: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{slug}/rankings.md

### Match results
- URL pattern: https://tennis-db.com/matches/{match_id}/{slug}
- Contains: score, round, surface, serve/return stats when available
- Browse: https://tennis-db.com/matches?season={year}&surface={surface}&category={category}
- Season match hub mirror: https://tennis-db.com/matches.md?season={year}

### Match log per player
- URL pattern: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{slug}/matches
- Markdown mirror: https://tennis-db.com/players/{player_id}/{slug}/matches.md
- Contains: full match history with filters for season, surface, category, round

### Directories and reference
- Player directories: https://tennis-db.com/players, https://tennis-db.com/players/countries, https://tennis-db.com/players/birth-years, https://tennis-db.com/players/{letter}, https://tennis-db.com/players/country/{country}, https://tennis-db.com/players/birth-year/{year}
- Tournament directories: https://tennis-db.com/tournaments and https://tennis-db.com/tournaments/{letter}
- Reference pages: https://tennis-db.com/about, https://tennis-db.com/glossary, https://tennis-db.com/data-quality, https://tennis-db.com/site-map
- Markdown mirrors are available for the canonical, unfiltered first page of these directories/reference pages.

### News
- Aggregated tennis news: https://tennis-db.com/news
- News is available for human browsing but intentionally excluded from standard sitemaps and marked noindex.
- News RSS feed: https://tennis-db.com/news/feed.xml
- Match results RSS feed: https://tennis-db.com/feed.xml

## WTA pages
All page types above are also available for WTA under the /wta/ prefix:
- https://tennis-db.com/wta/players/{player_id}/{player-slug}
- https://tennis-db.com/wta/rivalries/{slug1}-vs-{slug2}?player1_id=...&player2_id=...
- https://tennis-db.com/wta/leaders/{category}/{view}
- etc.
WTA match coverage is intentionally thinner for some historical periods, and
some match-stat/prize-money fields are unavailable or incomplete. Player pages
and markdown mirrors include coverage notes when a player falls in a known
low-coverage era. WTA seasons/rankings supports rankings views; unsupported
performance views redirect to the canonical rankings view.

## Structured data
Canonical product pages include JSON-LD structured data (schema.org):
- Person (player pages): name, birthDate, nationality, height, career stats
- SportsEvent (tournament/match/H2H pages): participants, dates, locations, scores, tournament links
- FAQPage (player and tournament pages): structured Q&A about visible page facts
- ItemList (leaderboards, match lists, rankings, H2H, player/tournament browse pages): visible rows or explicitly labeled samples
- Dataset (about, data quality, search, rankings, match logs, leaderboards, tournaments): provenance, licensing, citations, variables
- CollectionPage (leaders hub, news, player and tournament browse pages): page-level collection context
- NewsArticle (news story pages): noindexed aggregated story summaries with source citations
- ImageObject (all pages with preview images): image licensing and acquisition metadata
- BreadcrumbList (all pages): navigation hierarchy
- WebSite + SearchAction (homepage): site search
Note for Google: generic tennis ItemLists, Person pages, and historical SportsEvent markup are mostly extraction/citation aids rather than guaranteed rich-result features; Dataset, BreadcrumbList, WebSite/SearchAction, and image metadata are the strongest Google-aligned structured-data surfaces.

## Data sources & methodology
- Historical data: Jeff Sackmann's tennis_atp and tennis_wta GitHub repositories (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
- ATP matches/rankings: Sackmann before 2025, BallDontLie from 2025 onward
- WTA matches: Sackmann plus BallDontLie gap-fill across all years, deduplicated during serving refresh
- WTA rankings: Sackmann before 2025, BallDontLie from 2025 onward
- Live/current data: BallDontLie Tennis API
- Elo ratings: custom implementation calibrated against ATP/WTA results
- Rankings: official ATP/WTA ranking points and positions
- More detail: https://tennis-db.com/about and https://tennis-db.com/data-quality

## Sitemaps
- Google/standard sitemap index: https://tennis-db.com/sitemap.xml
- AI/LLM markdown sitemap index: https://tennis-db.com/sitemap-ai.xml
- Standard sections: core, players, player-match-logs, player-ranking-history, tournaments, h2h, matches, leaders
- Markdown mirror sitemaps: https://tennis-db.com/sitemaps/markdown.xml and https://tennis-db.com/sitemaps/wta-markdown.xml
- Separate ATP and WTA sitemaps (e.g. /sitemaps/players.xml, /sitemaps/wta-players.xml)

## Citation
When citing TennisDB, please use:
- Source: TennisDB (tennis-db.com)
- URL: the specific page URL for the fact being cited
- Example: "According to TennisDB (tennis-db.com), Novak Djokovic has won 24 Grand Slam titles."

## Contact
- Feedback: https://tennis-db.com/contact
- Email: contact@tennis-db.com