TENNIS EVERYONE

Tennis EveryOne Arizona Is America's Number One Year 'Round Tennis Center

Cartoonist Bil Keane, creative ringmaster of the “Family Circus” comic strip, lives in Arizona and is encircled by sunshine sports. He chooses to play tennis.

Columnist Erma Bombeck, Keane's neighbor in Paradise Valley and in international newspaper syndication, should be the PTA bridge player her writings suggest. But Erma, even if she does wiseacre about wearing a sweatband around her bicep, is taking tennis lessons.

Jerry Van Dyke, whose sound comedy has made audiences forget he is Dick Van Dyke's brother, and Tony Sandler, the Belgian-born half of the Sandler & Young singing team, and Howard Duff, matinee heart-pounder maturing to character actor, play nightclubs and theaters-in-the-round and telethons in Arizona. Offstage they are on court.

So they may be counted among the uncounted millions (although 20 million is becoming a popular, albeit optimistic guess) who are groundstroking and volleying through an athletic boom that these United States haven't seen, nor enjoyed, since the first days of bowling and hula hooping.

This thwack of Victor gut against optical yellow tennis balls has been rising to a soft thunder for the past five years.

Tennis, by the tables of individual participation and equipment sales, is neck and neck with golf. Tennis facilities, of the indoor variety alone, have gone from 36 in the nation to more than 1,200 and counting. Tennis professionals, of the Rod Laver variety, have become millionaires.

And the gasoline crisis looks like a $5 overdraft alongside the current shortage of tennis equipment.

The manufacturer of popular Davis rackets is signing no new retail outlets for the next two years. Racket stringers, even old customers, ordering additional supplies of Victor gut in March needn't expect delivery until September. Retailers' requests for tennis shoes, especially the expensive, latheruppered brands from France and Sweden, are backordered by as much as eight weeks.

Even Japan (a fair business barometer this) is exporting metal tennis rackets to all comers and countries.

The reasons behind this free-swinging, short-skirted obsession are as varied as the playing styles of Forest Hills and Anyburg High School.

Tennis is said to be a spinoff from physical fitness programs pushed by the government and men of medicine. It is certainly a healthy, pleasant release from the pre-dawn lone-liness of the long distance jogger. Could be that tennis represents an American return to pastimes the whole family can play. It certainly provides more exercise in one hour than any day-long, four-martini pursuit of a golf ball.

Whatever the explanation, as goes America so has gone Arizona, a Kodachrome state of permanent sunshine where tennis, if you're a lizard-type who can scurry in 115-degree summers, is a year-round avocation and residential vacation.

Arizona, from stumbling beginnings which included a half dozen racket clubs (when everybody spelled it “racquet”) and hotel courts which only wore nets when the gardner remembered to put them up, now has the two largest tennis facilities west of the Mississippi - the 34-court Tucson Racquet & Swim Club and the 31-court Tempe Racquet & Swim Club on the eastern edge of Phoenix.

“When I opened in December, 1971, I figured my operation would be quite small, about eight or 10 courts with a club membership of 200,” says Dan Hess, hard-hitting net player and owner of Tempe Racquet & Swim. “Demand has made us expand to 31 courts and 600 members.

“But here's a better indication of the popularity of tennis. Townhouses are going up around my club. Because of their proximity to a major tennis facility, land values have increased from between $10,000 to $12,000 per acre to $20,000 to $25,000 per acre. And that's in the past nine months.” Hess, following the advice of Joe Tofel, owner of the Tucson Racquet Club, also had the foresight to install one stadium court with a spectator capacity of 7,000.

That court allowed Tempe to become one of 10 American cities which hosted the Schick Tennis Classic and the Grand Masters Tournament this year.

These concurrent events brought Arizonans the No. 1 tennis player in the U.S. (Jimmy Connors), the No. 1 senior (Frank Sedgeman), the No. 1 junior (Billy Martin) and the No. 1 box office draw (Bobby Riggs).

And the existence of an identical stadium facility brought American Airlines and its sponsorship of the Association of Tennis Professionals Tournament, featuring Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Rod Laver and John Newcombe, to Tofel and the Tucson Racquet Club.

Arizona can brag about super facilities for public tennis - such as the Phoenix Tennis Center with 22 lighted courts and sidelines thick with citizens on standby awaiting a court cancellation.

Arizona can brag about super teaching professionals for public and private tennis - such as world professional champion Ken Rosewall at John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch in Paradise Valley; Paul Willey, former captain and coach of Canada's Davis Cup team at the Phoenix Tennis Center; Brian Cheney, U.S. Air Force champion at Tempe Racquet & Swim; and Billy Higgins, the nation's No. 1 teaching professional at Carefree Inn.

Yet tennis in Arizona establishes no playing monopoly for residents..

No new hotel in the resort-rich Phoenix area is allowing itself to build without tennis courts. Hence the Adidas-shod toddy-drinkers in the lounges of the new Scottsdale-Hilton and the Sheraton-Scottsdale Inn.

No established hotel is sitting satisfied with the courts it installed when it began. Which explains the workers in overalls who have been spreading more courts alongside existing complements at Mountain Shadows, Camelback Inn and the venerable but recently modernized Arizona Biltmore.

The 45-year-old Biltmore, traditionally staid, suitably aristocratic, has adjusted both of these characteristics by jumping on the tennis waggon.

All of it is due to the realizations of new management and the hustle of Biltmore tennis professional Frank Pierce, an Ivy League net star from Choate and Princeton who was once ranked No. 9 among eastern tennis players.

This season, the Biltmore has progressed from four patchy courts to 10 firm surfaces, three with lights for night play, plus twin saunas to ease the guests' muscles.

It has also been chosen as one of only five tennis facilities in the nation to offer TennisAmerica instruction clinics, a vacation-training package developed by Wimbledon and Forest Hill women's champion Billie Jean King and her mentor-instructor Dennis Van der Meer.

And so Arizona continues to expand by leaps and bounds. Tennis boutiques have popped up like hamburger franchises. Warmup suits are outselling Stetsons.

The sport is even producing its own humor.

It seems that the score between two club tigers was deuce in the final set and closing on match point. Then a string of funeral cars drove by the court. One player dropped his racket and stood by the fence, head bowed.

"Why on earth did you interrupt our game for a funeral?" asked one player.

"Sorry, old boy," said his opponent. "But she wasn't a bad wife you know."

That joke is more significant than funny.

For when it first started making the rounds 15 years ago those two players were golfers on the 15th tee.