SAN DIEGO — The first time I ever saw or stepped on a tennis court was in 1949 when I was sixteen and got a job at Camp Watitoh near Tanglewood in the Berkshires as a maintenance worker. One of my first jobs was to brush and roll the tomato-colored clay tennis courts smooth early every morning. That was boring but tolerable in the cool early morning air. So now I was the tennis court maven, and was assigned to build two new courts in the lower unshaded unused part of the camp property.
It was hotter than hell when a flat bed semi-trailer fully laden with 100 pound sacks of red clay pulled up where the court was to be built. The driver shrewdly disappeared and I was left by myself to off-load the entire truck load, open and spread the contents of each bag until the new court area was entirely covered. Next I had to rake the clay even, water it down, and brush and roll it smooth. It took several days’ effort in over 90-degree July heat. I never played on any of the courts, because I didn’t know how. I never came across any in Brooklyn.
I was taught to play tennis in 1958 by my Uncle Dave, when I was still on active duty in the Coast Guard. He taught me at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, which was still then a functioning Army base. I was dating the base commanding general’s daughter at the time and one of the most enchanting evenings I can remember was when I was invited onto his PT boat launch for a moonlight cruise around the entire island of Manhattan.
Uncle Dave had a long history in tennis. He talked about playing every day in Hawaii in 1940 with a bunch of doctors who. “woke up with White Horse and water, and went to bed with White Horse and water.” “They gave themselves injections of Vitamin B-12 to keep going.” Years later he ran a tennis manufacturing company in Massachusetts, and asked me, a teenager, if any of my contemporaries were looking for some sports equipment he could manufacture.
I didn’t get into tennis on regular basis until 1964 at the single concrete court in Cardiff. One Saturday morning a married woman from the Unitarian Fellowship in Solana Beach came by and sat on the waiting bench beside the court. In short order without saying a word, it became apparent she was interested in a married gent who was my opponent.
Within a year I joined A new private tennis club that opened up on a dirt road in the back country of Cardiff. Tony Kuspa, a neighbor of mine, and I killed a rattlesnake near the courts. The road is now a paved 4 lane highway.
From time to time we hosted other clubs in the area. I remember watching Pat Todd, one of the great women’s champions playing against us for the classy Rancho Santa Fe club nearby. One of the members of that club was an heiress who had inherited approximately $40 million. For her 6th husband she married an attorney from the club, and for their honeymoon, they took a six-month tennis tour of Europe leaving her two teen age sons at home. Both of those kids spent a lot of time at our home after surfing in Solana Beach, even sleeping over.
Eventually my son wised up and felt he was being used as a half way flop house and terminated the arrangement.
I played there religiously every Saturday afternoon and Sunday mornings, while the family swam at the club pool. I usually played one other evening during the week.
Two of our social friends were consummate players. Quite often they were doubles partners. They were such intense competitors, that whenever they lost, if one felt the other had been at fault they would have tremendous arguments and might not speak to each other for hours. One Saturday they were due to be dinner guests at our home in the evening. At 4 pm. the wife called and said they could not come because Joe had an abscess where the sun doesn’t shine and was in intense pain. I rushed over to their house and Joe was in such agony that he was crying while biting hard into a wash cloth to keep from screaming. Their doctor was coming to the house shortly. I bid them goodbye, and went home to entertain the other couple we had invited. At 8 pm, just before sitting down to dinner, the door bell rang and I was shocked. It was the couple. The smiling husband showed no effects of the misery he had suffered just a short while ago. The doctor had arrived, lanced, drained and dressed the abscess, and there was immediate relief and recovery.
Another member was a very pleasant and far better player than myself. Many years later I had moved out of the area and remarried. My wife Carole and I had breakfast at a resort in Costa Rica. At the very next table were Jack and his wife Rae. I had unsuccessfully tried to find a tennis game at the resort, and here it was. I had never played singless with Jack before, and expected to get slaughtered. But lo and behold somehow I was able to beat him in the one set we played in the tropical heat.
In the mid seventies our family switched to playing in Rancho Santa Fe at the Whispering Palms Golf and Tennis Club. It has since been renamed “Morgan Run.”
There’s a luxurious club on the grounds that serves both the tennis and golf players. For quite a long time I played very early mornings with an Army brigadier general. There was a 65-year-old former nationally-rated player who walked slowly with the aid of a cane, but when he was on the court and anything was hit near him, he always returned a winning placement.
One year a water spout tornado came off the ocean, passed within a few feet of my home, knocking down trees and damaging roofs, never hitting the ground. It passed over the Whispering Palms tennis courts about seven miles inland and bent the fences on all eight courts about 25 degrees in an Easterly direction.
One year When I was a USTA tennis umpire, I worked the national seniors tournament for 65 years and older at Morgan Run. I was honored to chair umpire a match in which Tom Brown played. He was the great world champion in the late 30’s and 40’s. What I noticed was that just about all of the participants had magnificently fit physiques, but most had bowed bandy legs as well.
In 1977 I was in Thailand on business by myself, and found someone to play singles with. I was huge at the time, weighing 277 pounds. For the first and only time in my life there were ball boys to retrieve the balls that had gone out of play. I thought it would be luxurious not to have to chase the errant balls. Very quickly I discovered it was more of a curse than a blessing. Normally I got a moment to recover my breath when I was slowly retrieving a ball. But with ball boys fetching, every time I turned around the ball was thrown back into my hands and I was still breathless.
In 1982, I was nestled on Coronado island just over the bridge from San Diego with my new wife Carole. Conveniently we lived half a block from the Glorietta Tennis courts where I played several days a week. Early on I became friendly with a congenial guy who was a much better player than myself. We had a regular game during the week. I noticed that he didn’t show up for a couple of weeks which was disappointing because I enjoyed him so much. I remembering inquiring if anyone knew if he was sick or on vacation? “No” was the reply, “didn’t you hear that he jumped off the bridge and committed suicide!” I think he was 52 years old.
One Saturday I twisted my ankle and had to sit on the bench at mid court sideline. I knew it was bad enough that I had to have it checked out at the emergency room in the nearby hospital. While I was on the bench one of our better players sat down heavily beside me while switching sides. He was breathing quite hard. He was quite trim, but a heavy smoker. I thought to myself, “Geez Charley you‘ve got to knock off some of that smoking.” Anyway I hobbled off to the hospital waiting to have my ankle looked at. About fifteen minutes after I arrived, in came Charley barely able to stand assisted by his wife. He was having a heart attack. Naturally they attended to him first, and he wound up in the intensive Care ward for two days. About an hour and a half later they wrapped my ankle and I went home. It was Charley’s third heart attack. He continued smoking and several years later had a serious stroke. I think he finally gave up smoking after that.
Sometimes we would play at the Hotel Del Coronado nearby. The courts were situated at a lower level with dining tables and chairs looking down upon us. Guests would watch us play while they ate and drank. One time, Vince O’Roarke and I were partners on the hotel court. Vince was a retired Navy Captain. He was a pilot with two Navy Crosses awarded for valor in the Vietnam war His last duty before retiring was as commanding officer of an aircraft carrier. We were both residents of the Cays, finished playing, and climbed upstairs together to return to our cars. At the top of the stairs some people who had been watching, complemented us on the game we has just completed. We thanked them, and proceeded down the long pathway to the parking lot. About 2/3rds of the way two women walking behind us complimented us on how good our legs looked. After we had thanked them, I turned to Vince and said, “We’ve done so well, I think we ought to turn around and start over again.”
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Ira Spector is an author and freelance writer based in San Diego. This selection, with slight revisions, was republished from Spector’s 2011 work, Sammy Where Are You? An Unconventional Memoir … Sort of. It is available via Amazon.