Tennis: A Sport for the Nobility and, Then, the Masses

First published Feb. 15, 2021

I learned to play tennis as a high school freshman in the spring of 1948. My algebra teacher, Mr. McGown, was the tennis team coach at Lafayette High School in Buffalo, NY. He encouraged me to come out to learn the game as a freshman. By the time, I was a junior, I was playing varsity first doubles. After one of our matches, an article appeared in the Buffalo Courier Express describing one of our doubles matches in which my partner and I were losing and I noticed I had broken a string on my racket. I borrowed a racket from a teammate who had finished his match and we went on to come back from a deficit to win the match. I am not sure what made that doubles match newsworthy nor do I know why a sports reporter witnessed the event. One probably was assigned by the paper to high school sports and happened to come to our match that day in lieu of baseball or basketball, played in the spring, also; they of much more interest. I still have the short article. I was said to be 5 feet 4 inches in the article and my teammate 5 feet 2 inches. Perhaps, that was what made it newsworthy, David beating Goliath. My first racquet was a Slazenger. The company originated in England and at one time was the largest producer of tennis balls and had excellent racquets characterized by the stem splitting into two branches to hold the head of the racquet.

I became a life-long tennis player. I was not good at golf. It took too much time and I spent too much time in the rough looking for my ball. My lifestyle as an academic physician with family responsibilities made tennis ideal. Sixty to ninety minutes and one could get a terrific workout and it was a very enjoyable sport. At Cornell, our fraternity had a court at a bottom of a hill behind the house, easily accessible on a weekend afternoon. Some of my fondest memories of friendship are of the foursomes who played together regularly and who with their spouses became our close friends. In winter, we played indoors at the Midtown Tennis Club in Rochester. That foursome was made up of physicians, colleagues and friends of mine. In late spring, summer, and early fall, we had two outdoor courts at which we played. The principal one was on a cul-de-sac that held three homes and a tennis court shared by all the home owners. The group was made up of two orthopedic surgeons, a pharmacist, Al Livingston, and me. The two orthopedic surgeons were former college varsity players. It was Livingston who lived on the street with the tennis court and was our host. One of the physicians, Donald (Don) Chan, a very talented surgeon at the University of Rochester Medical Center, had a Chinese banquet at summer’s end for our tennis group and our wives, many of whom, including Alice Jo, also, were tennis players. The ladies usually played indoors at the Harley School, a private school that had three tennis courts in a building that they allowed locals to use for a fee as a tennis club. Harley School, also, offered lessons. We signed two of our daughters, Susan and Joanne, up for them one summer. The first lesson was a mile jog, not to their liking; they jogged home and refuse to go back. Our season ending tennis banquet was prepared at the Shanghai Restaurant in Rochester under Don Chan and his wife Dorothy’s guidance. It was a multicourse meal that was authentic Chinese, not as a radiologist friend of Chinese descent used to say “This is not Chinese, it is American Jewish”.

The other outdoor court was at a neighbor’s home in Martin and Sheri Handelman’s backyard, just a two minute bike ride from our house. He was an attorney and his brother (Stan), a dental faculty member at the Eastman Dental Center, usually played with two physician friends, an oncologist, John Bennett, and a dermatologist, Tom McMeekin. I was asked to fill in when one or another could not make it, which was frequently. I was an aggressive player at net in doubles, prone to poach on returns to the server’s side of the court and to slam the net shot at the foot of the opposing net player or angled sharply to the server’s side, out of reach for a return.  

Tennis was a life-long sport for exercise, friendly but fierce competition and a builder of camaraderie with many friends. I had the opportunity to play on all surfaces: classic red clay, Har-Tru green clay, grass and hard surface (asphalt or concrete, usually topped by an acrylic resin to seal it and permit boundary lines to be marked), indoor and out. I even rebuilt a clay court with a boyhood friend at a neighbor’s home in Bay Beach, Ontario, Canada where my grandparents had a summer home. It had been left to deteriorate from lack of care, filled with weeds. The owner ordered new red clay for us to install after we had reached that point. It took us all summer and we played on it once before returning to Buffalo for the start of high school.

Tennis originated in France as the game jeu de palme in the 12th century. It started by hitting the object (ball) back and forth with ones hands (palme) over a lax net, then using leather gloves, and then later a primitive handle with a paddle-like head, the primordial tennis racquet. Similar sport dated back millennia but it took hold principally in France in the 17th century and became popular in the court of French kings and nobility. It was played indoors. They would start the game by shouting “tenez”, loosely translated, “here we go” “here it comes” or “let’s play” and that apparently, ultimately, led to the anglicized “tennis”. The current Gallerie Nationale du Jeu de Palme or, more commonly, the Musée Jeu de Palme Art Museum in Paris is in a building built by Napoleon III in the Tuileries Garden in 1861 to house a real tennis court (80 meters by 13 meters). The game by this time had spread to Wales and England, where it was transformed into lawn tennis, played outdoors with two posts, a net, racquets and rubber balls. Standards for laying out the court, originally hour-glass shaped, were soon established. In the late 1800’s, the All English Croquet Club was convinced to replace a croquet court with a court for tennis and made it rectangular with today’s dimensions. The Marleybone Cricket Club soon followed suit and added terms such as deuce, advantage, and two chances per serve. The derivation of the term “love” for zero is thought to go back to the French who referred to egg, or L’oeuf, for zero (goose egg), which over time was pronounced “leff” or “loff” and was, apparently, anglicized to “love”.  

Wimbledon became the home of tennis as we know it. The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club began its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon in 1877, outside London. Twenty-one amateurs competed in the gentlemen's singles tournament, the only event at first. In the next 26 years, the lady’s singles, gentlemen’s doubles, mixed doubles and women’s doubles were introduced. In the 1950s, most tennis stars turned professional; Wimbledon remained an amateur tournament. In 1968 Wimbledon capitulated and in so doing regained its status as the world’s top tennis tournament.

I recall the very early professional tennis tour in the United States in which Jack Kramer, Richard (Pancho) Gonzales, Francisco (Pancho) Segura, Tony Trabert and a few others went from one city to another playing singles and doubles on courts assembled in facilities used for basketball and hockey. These athletes were great tennis players but the tournaments were all amateur and they had wives and families and had to make a living. When Trabert won Wimbledon he received a 10-pound certificate that was redeemable at Lily White’s Sporting Goods Store in London. As a touring pro he received $75,000 against a percentage of the gate and earned $125,000 over the first 14 months playing 101 matches. My maternal uncle, Arnold (Sonny) Silverstein, a former college player at the University of Miami in the early 1940’s whose teammate at Miami was Pancho Segura, took me to see the pros play in the Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo. Segura who renewed his friendship with my uncle asked me to hold his wallet during the match. The locker room was not considered secure. Segura was small but had a powerful two handed forehand. The others were tall and had big serve and volley games. My Uncle Sonny went into the Navy upon graduation and was a commander of a landing ship tanks (LST) in the Pacific Theater island-hopping campaign during World War II at the tender age of 22.

The Wimbledon Championships, the mother of all championships (1877) and the only major tennis event still played on grass, is held annually in early July. Wimbledon, a district and town in greater London, seven miles from the city center, attracts thousands of visitors, many trying to obtain a coveted Centre Court ticket. The tennis center in Wimbledon, now called The All England Tennis Club, stubbornly requires a strict all-white dress code, even beige will not do. Competitors are referred to as miss, misses or mister and the matches as the ladies or gentlemen’s singles or doubles. Strawberries and cream is the classic refreshment. The tournament is under Royal patronage and a member of the Royal Family awards the cups (and checks). Wimbledon remains the epitome of classic tennis with its grass surface, white garb and it is the oldest of the four majors, the others being U.S. Open (1881), French Open (1891) and Australian Open (1905) tournaments. The great American player, Don Budge was the first to win all majors in one year, 1938, referred to as winning the grand slam. In Olympic years, if one wins the four majors and the Olympic championship, it is referred to as winning the golden slam.

Tennis is a terrific pastime. Courts are available virtually everywhere. Many free public courts are available for those unable to join tennis clubs. Some homes have tennis courts in lieu of grass spaces, including the White House. The equipment is inexpensive. The time playing is conducive to the busy worker with family responsibilities. Men and women can play together in many cases. Family games are possible after children get some level of competence. Players who remain healthy can play into their nineties. My daughter Pam Reading, her husband, Ed, their son and my grandson, Alex, my wife and I, my grandsons Jesse and Sam Evans and their father, Doug, my grandson Sebastian Uriarte are all solid tennis players; Sebastian played on his college team. So what do you say, “Tennis Anyone?”.

Written December, 2020