Waepril Chua is quick to tell you she is not good at tennis yet, and she offers it as a credential rather than a confession. The Vancouver-based beauty creator picked up a racquet as an adult, found little online that reflected that experience, and this summer launched The Modern Serve, a platform for players who came to the game late. It runs on the same principle that has shaped her beauty work for years: show the process, not just the polished result.
That principle is not a slogan. Chua lives with a product for weeks, watching how her skin actually responds, before she films a word about it, a pace that runs against the churn of most influencer calendars. The patience has put her in the room with L’Occitane, whose hand cream she counts among her personal favorites, as well as Vichy Laboratoires and the skin-focused BAO Laboratory, which has appeared in her recent content. She has also worked with Vestir, an online marketplace for luxury designer pieces, and her latest collaboration, with Korean skincare label Beauty of Joseon and Costco Canada, is now live on her Instagram.
The timing of her tennis project is sharper than it might look. The sport is in the middle of a late-bloomer boom: in the United States alone, a record of nearly 5 million people played for the first time in 2025, and adults 35 and older accounted for close to 95 percent of the year’s growth. Those players are poorly served by content built for juniors and pros. The Modern Serve speaks to them directly, across instruction, wellness, style and travel, from the perspective of someone still working it out. Its Tennis Life series opened with a trip to the National Bank Open in Montreal, and a second entry finds Chua renting a Yonex Ezone 100L in Vancouver after falling for the brand’s espresso-brown colorway, a test-before-you-buy instinct lifted straight from her skincare practice.
Travel is already woven through the story. Chua spent time at the Mouratoglou Academy on the French Riviera, a camp she genuinely enjoyed, and the photographs are on the site. The Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca sits next on her list, a possible future Tennis Life entry if the trip comes together. In October she heads to the Rolex Shanghai Masters, Asia’s only ATP Masters 1000 event and one that players have voted the best tournament at that level five years running, and she plans to write about it once she is home.
Her reporting wish list reads like a serious fan’s. “If I get the chance, I’d love to talk to Carlos Alcaraz or Holger Rune about coming back from injury,” she says, pointing to a piece on tennis injuries she is developing for recreational players navigating setbacks of their own. Just as high on her list is a chance to be the one answering the questions. “I’d love to be a guest on Andy Roddick’s Served podcast,” Chua says.
“He’s so straightforward and genuine, he just says what’s on his mind, and I respect that”
Closer to home, she is mapping tennis facilities and programs across greater Vancouver, the practical, local information recreational players go looking for and rarely find.
None of this, she insists, is a retreat from beauty, which continues at full speed. “These interests overlap more than people assume,” she says. “Wellness, style, and travel all connect to how someone experiences a sport. The Modern Serve is where I bring those subjects together.” Whether the subject is a hand cream or a frustrating afternoon on court, the voice is the same, and so is the promise: the real process, not the highlight reel. The Modern Serve is live now at TheModernServe.com, with new Tennis Life episodes and instructional content arriving on a rolling schedule.
