By Roger Cox

Like a lot of high school tennis players, Ben Gologor was looking for a summer program to improve his game. Unlike most, he opted not for a traditional summer tennis camp but for a junior tennis tour, in his case with a company called Tennis: Europe.

“I thought it would be an adventure,” Gologor recalls. “Combining tennis with travel seemed like an ideal thing.” His three-week itinerary took him first on a quick sightseeing tour of Paris and then on to tournaments on red clay in Holland, Belgium, and Germany. “In addition to getting tournament experience, I learned a lot about Europe and other cultures,” he says.

Tennis and travel do make an ideal combination, as Gologor found. Yet while there are numerous companies that specialize in tours for teenagers, very few include tennis instruction or competition as an integral part of the package. It’s one thing to have courts available if kids want to hit and set up their own matches; it’s quite another if they’re hoping to improve their game at the same time they’re expanding their horizons.

Tennis: Europe, the group Gologor found, is a notable exception. Now in its thirty-first year of operation, Tennis: Europe has become the acknowledged leader in junior tennis tours. It was founded on the premise that beginning tournament players need to do more than drill and practice; to succeed in competition, they need the kind of experience that can come only from playing matches. The group originally chose Europe not only because it has an abundance of junior tournaments during the summer, but also because European rules allow playing both singles and doubles and entering events in more than one age group. “The goal is lots of matches in a short period of time,” says founder and codirector Dr. Martin Vinokur.

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