JOHN GARDINER'S TENNIS RANCH

JOHN GARDINER'S TENNIS RANCH ON CAMELBACK BY PAUL DEAN

International notables have The Places they prefer and The Personalities they appoint.

So the very fine and important and rich, not the nouveau plastic jet setters, buy art through Sotheby Parke-Bernet and jewels from Van Cleef & Arpels. The Brothers Kriendler have fed them at 21. Oscar de la Renta dresses them for evenings. The Del Monte Lodge receives them for golf during the days.

And John Gardiner arranges their tennis at two valleys, one, his resort among apricot trees in Carmel Valley, Calif., the other, his ranch among the prickly pears in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Gardiner, 56, a little Irish, a whole lot visionary, is the Uncle Mame and Pied Leprechaun of tennis.

But if facts be more impressive than opinions, then consider these facts: Charles Percy, when campaigning for the U.S. Senate, hid from press and pressure following the 1966 murder of his daughter by flying to northern California and John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch.

John Scali, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, healed from recent heart surgery by staying and playing in Arizona at John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch.

Dina Merrill and husband Cliff Robertson fled the Los Angeles earthquake and waited out their shakes at Gardiner's.

Gardiner is the only man who has been able to light the lone fuse leading to the one stick of dynamite that could ever blast world tennis champion Ken Rosewall from his Sydney home, payrolling his Aussie king of aces as his resident professional and selling Rosewall a $200,000 home, complete with rooftop tennis court, in Arizona.

John F. Kennedy has played Jack Kramer and Burt Bacharach has partnered Roy Emerson and a towering Pancho Gonzalez has swapped lobs with Tom Thumb Willie. Shoemaker and Bobby Riggs has hustled all of them at Gardiner's.

None of which has been bad for Gardiner, son of a Pennsylvania Quaker, a former history teacher who learned the sport-resort-food business through a tennis scholarship and waiting tables in the cafeteria of Pennsylvania State Teachers' College.

"Those were some days and some memories," said Gardiner, mind on the past of Depression poverty in Philadelphia, eyes on the present richness of a western omelet he had ordered for Saturday breakfast at his Arizona facility. "At least you ate and had a room and were getting schooling even if you did sign your scholarship and pay checks right back to the college."

A guest, venerable ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, walked by Gardiner's table in Gardiner's dining room at Gardiner's tennis ranch where we were chatting. Two terraces down Camelback Mountain, Gov. Kit Bond of Missouri walked out in a warm-up suit to choose one of 17 courts for his morning's play.

"I grew up on Carlisle Street in Philadelphia, a little pocket of Irish between the blacks and Italians, a place where you can't walk at night now," remembered Gardiner. "Dad painted and varnished yachts for a living so if it hadn't been for football and tennis scholarships, $180 a semester, I'd never have made it through college."

Noises of heady construction whispered into the plate glass and black timbered club house. Workmen were finishing a six-figure, four-bedroom, two-sunken tubbed, one-swimming pooled mountainside eerie at the ranch, a winter home that Gardiner recently sold to Bob Galvin of Chicago, millionaire chairman of the board of Motorola.

"I graduated from college in 1942 and went straight into the Air Force. I was commandant of cadets at just about every flight training field in Texas - Randolph, Kelly, Ellington, Big Springs, Waco, Lackland. Got out in 1946 at 27, a helluvan age to be starting in business."

In a ranch office, a clerk was filing in-house guest reports. It was a gazetteer of the winter wealthy from New York, from Detroit, from Chicago. From Canada, from Germany, from Australia, from England.

"When I left the service I went to San Francisco just because I'd never been there. Took a trolley car to Berkeley, saw a sign which said 'California Teachers' Association' and went inside. A guy insisted I go to Monterey after a job and that's how I ended up teaching at Monterey High School. It was an 8-week job which stretched into two years teaching English and coaching tennis and football."

Today's business continued to infiltrate this talk of yesterday. Rosemary Stack, wife of actor Robert Stack, was calling to make reservations for a week. A rich rubbernecker was given the $1 tour of the tennis ranch casa owned by Joseph Coors of the Adolph Coors Co. For comparison, there would be a visit to the condominium casita of Harold Mayer of Oscar Mayer & Co.

"The school wanted me to go to Stanford and earn a master's degree and get my California credentials," continued Gardiner. "I went up there, registered, stayed for two days and then quit. I just wasn't prepared to study any more. I wanted something else."

And that was the hinge on Gardiner's life.

He shifted careers in mid-court, moving in 1948 from public school to private club as tennis professional at the prestigious Del Monte Lodge at Pebble Beach, Calif.

With the job came a personal realization.

Tennis and tennis teaching, thought Gardiner, was a clique pastime played on tight little islands of snobbery. Only rich club members could afford it. And ordinary Monterey kids wanting to learn the game had to travel 130 miles into San Francisco for a one hour, $5 lesson.

So Gardiner sold Del Monte's management on the idea of summer programs of tennis training for youngsters between the ages of 8 and 16.

It caught on and it took off.

It involved the children of that Pebble Beach colony, the high social empire from San Francisco and Los Angeles. The banking Crockers. The Huntingdons. The Stanfords and Hopkins.

It also attracted adults who would become Gardiner's close friends. Singer Bing Crosby. Author Ernie Gann. Actor Clark Gable. Dinah Shore and Doris Day.

Two separate and distinct tennis clinics are held each week with formal instruction from Monday through Friday, with a special strategy session and tournament play Saturday morning. The Tennis Ranch has the most complete and modern teaching courts in the world.

The Clinic is designed to take care of your tennis needs whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced player. This is accomplished by a proven and concentrated system of instruction by a staff of qualified instructors.

Yet, as the post-war decade moved into the 50s, tennis provided no rivalry for golf. The Del Monte Lodge changed its philosophy and facility, building a convention hall to attract business meetings and golfing conventioneers. There was reduced room at the inn for guests who wanted to play tennis.

And that switch in character produced Gardiner's second major realization. "I felt that if I was ever going to get a shot at making tennis what I knew it could be, it would have to be through a tennis hotel built for tennis vacations," he said. "I wasn't sure how I could do it or where I could do it. Not until Pebble Beach had 22 days of consecutive fog and I drove my kid to Carmel just to let him see some sunshine." On that drive, Gardiner, his son and wife Barbara, found A windless valley within a valley. It held a ranch, with house and swimming pool, among a grove of apricot trees and asparagus fields.

The price of these 11 acres was $100,000. Gardiner, strapped as are most by buying a home, paying for a car, building a family, was worth just $5,000 in life savings.

But, with damp palms, he put his entire kitty onto the ranch. It wasn't even a down payment. Simply a deposit to delay the sale for 30 days.

The following month was a furious financial rally for Gardiner.

He sold his half share in a tennis clothing business to his partner, former Wimbledon and Forest Hills champion Jack Kramer. That $8,000 was enough to handle a down payment on the Carmel Valley ranch.

He met with the parents of former pupils. They gave him $7,500 to keep initial mortgage payments going.

He sold his $35,000 Pebble Beach home. The equity allowed him to start borrowing for the paving of three tennis courts.

"Then we had the worst winter that I think northern California had ever seen," said Gardiner. "It was so wet we couldn't get the courts in. When we opened in 1957 we were a tennis ranch without tennis courts. We couldn't afford a liquor license, but were starting a good reputation as a restaurant because my wife was doing all the cooking. "We were barely keeping our breath above water. Every time my wife and I took a swim in the pool I'd say: 'Barbara, enjoy it because it might be our last swim.' "

But Gardiner swam instead of sinking.

More old and generous friends came to check on Gardiner's struggling experiment. They watched Gardiner fixing the plumbing and Barbara forming souffles.

They asked Gardiner what he needed. Gardiner told them of guest cottages, a remodelled kitchen, more courts. They told Gardiner to go ahead because they would finance him.

"When the courts were finally in, Ernie Gann and I hit with each other to christen them," continued Gardiner. "I used a warped, $1 racket. It still hangs in my office. That racket means a lot to me."

Three years after opening, John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch at Carmel had turned its losses around and in 1961 began writing profits from a half dozen courts and 10 guest rooms. It had opened as the first pure tennis resort in the world. It is now, 17 years, 14 courts, several dormitories, and two swimming pools later, the oldest tennis resort in the world.

And for the past three years, John Gardiner's ranch has sold every junior camp or adult tennis vacation, from weekend rest period to three week training package, it has had the space and time to offer.

The administrative automation which comes with such success gave Gardiner much time. Time to spend months travelling the United States, Europe and the Far East. Time, also, to develop new realizations.

"Long before the so-called tennis explosion that we're seeing now I'd been saying that adult tennis would be bigger than kid's tennis," he explained. "And I'd always thought tennis would be largely for women who had time during the days, who sought active vacations, orange juice breaks and roses on their breakfast trays.

"I also had the idea that condominiums attached to tennis facilities would be a logical step. After all, people were buying golf condominiums and ski condominiums so why not tennis condominiums?"

Right: Saturday tournament on upper courts. Below: The Casitas, forty 2bedroom condominium cottages, feature superb appointments with all the amenities of resort living. Each bedroom is equipped with dressing room, both and private balcony. Living rooms with fireplaces and completely equipped Pullman kitchen complete the intimate deluxe accommodations.

In 1967, Gardiner visited Phoenix to discuss tennis and tennis ranches with two businessmen, Bill O'Brien and Vik Jackson. They were new owners of 57 acres on Camelback Mountain's north slope and its buildings, the bankrupt Paradise Valley Racquet Club opened in 1957 by actor John Ireland and actress Joanne Dru.

The Gardiner system includes a closed circuit television system for instant replay so each clinic participant can watch his own style in a critique with the instructor. Left shows camera in operation from inside the training room. Above is the replay on the television screen.

"I was doing nothing but travelling and going nuts about doing nothing," explained Gardiner. "So I agreed to buy in and develop the plan."

Gardiner knew the risks attendant to any new concept. He recognized the local stigma stuck to a property which had already failed quite miserably. He sensed the slender chances of finding multi-million dollar funding for something that sounded like a California promoter's con.

Real estate men chortled when Gardiner said his ranch would be formed around 41 casitas, each would sell in the unfurnished bracket of $50,000, and owners could live in them for 60 days each year. For the rest of the year, said Gardiner, amid more trade chuckles, the ranch would rent the casitas to guests with only 40 per cent of the rentals being returned to owners.

Gardiner, speaking as a consultant, outlined his idea of condominiums, four-bedroom casas and apartment-styled casitas And all the polished wrinkles necessary to turn a resort into a form of Elizabeth Arden operation with tennis balls.

Part-time resident, owner of one of the Casitas and patron of the arts is Larry Aldrich, seen in his living room overlooking Paradise Valley. He is president and founder of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Conn., and a color sample from his collection is seen on the east wall.

Even the rather rich flinched when Gardiner also said he planned to build several four-bedroom casas, virtually seasonal homes with minimum price tags of $180,000.

Who, sniggered Arizona tennis players, would pay an initiation fee of $1,250 and dues of $300 a year to become members in a private, local tennis club Gardiner planned for his ranch? How would he fill an anticipated 12 courts when hotels and high schools throughout the area had free and empty courts galore?

But a funny thing happened on Gardiner's way to center court fame in the national tennis picture. His Tennis Ranch on Camelback started to move like a Rod Laver overhead.

A letter of trust and introduction from an old friend of his Del Monte Lodge days opened the vault door which led to bank financing of $3 million.

Two years after his 1970 opening, Gardiner had sold all of his $50,000 casitas with the last unit appreciated by time and popularity to $90,000. His casas were sold from blueprints before they were built.

Seventy players, 20 more than the early membership ceiling Gardiner had established, paid those fat initiation fees and annual dues to join the tennis club.

The current surge in tennis interest soon overpopulated the 12 courts built. It is crowding the 17 Gardiner has now. It will have to be handled by the 21 courts planned by the end of next year because Gardiner's ranch has run out of space. Which is why champion Ken Rosewall will have to settle for a coated plywood court on the rooftop of his new house.

Even the early fears of conservationists and the Paradise Valley Town Council have been exorcized by Gardiner's sincerity for detail and dedication to earlier promises.

During ranch planning and zoning development, one local councilman snorted that such a facility would ruin the precious and magnificent skyline of landmark Camelback Mountain.

So Gardiner deeded the top 22 acres of his property to The Preservation of Camelback Mountain Foundation, a guarantee that the top 1,000 feet of the peak would remain uncluttered for climbers, sightseers and posterity.

Another Gardiner critic said a cluster of naked casitas would make one side of the mountain look like it had been settled as a kibbutz. So Gardiner built with Arizona's umber-green coloring in mind, replanted cactus, rearranged rocks and planted the entire ranch with desert flora until it is a mountainside mosaic of perfect camouflage.

And so the notables continue to live and visit and hit tennis balls at Gardiner's $4.5 million facility. Professionals like Stan Smith and Jimmy Connors and John Newcombe play there. Industrialists such as Charles Gates of Gates Rubber, live there. Cabinet members, like Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton, relax there.

Gardiner continues to commute weekly between his valleys, Carmel and Paradise. He's off to follow the Wimbledon tennis championships one month. Then to Hawaii or Sun Valley or New Orleans to manage John Gardiner tennis clinics the next month.

Now he's spending time in Las Vegas under a management contract with the Tropicana Hotel, sponsors of tennis clinics on 8 indoor courts. Which, like most other businesses in the gambling capital, are open 24-hours a day.

Yet there are moments when Gardiner can pause, look outside to his facilities, look inside at himself and feel a justifiable tingle of accomplishment.

Sometimes it comes when leaving his Camelback Mountain clubhouse, gazing out and below to 17 shamrock-green dominoes, soon to be 21, and sensing the butterfly touch of sunshine in February in Arizona.

Other times it is watching 16 tennis professionals on 8 courts working smooth swings into a battalion of youngsters. And knowing that he has achieved this without ever hiring a public relations firm to publicize his product.

Then there was a new fragment of satisfaction Gardiner found in London last year.

He was watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

A stranger, an American youngster, stood nearby. The lad was wearing a tennis sweater indicating he was a John Gardiner graduate.

That sweater wasn't promoting Gardiner by name. It had just one emblem on the breast a humped camel. It carried just three words The Tennis Ranch.

Camelback's "Praying Monk" also reflected in the quiet pool dominates the twilight mood.

The spacious clubhouse with its broad view of the Valley, is complete with all refinements including facilities for indoor or outdoor dining, intimate bar and lounge. Three swimming pools and patios are a sun-worshipper's dream.