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RESORTS |
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PUBLIC COURTS |
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TOP 10 TENNIS RESORTS |
| 1. |
Rancho
Valencia Resort
Rancho Santa Fe, California |
| 2. |
Wild
Dunes Resort
Charleston, South Carolina |
| 3. |
The
Broadmoor
Colorado Springs, Colorado |
| 4. |
Ponte
Vedra Inn & Club
Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida |
| 5. |
Palmetto
Dunes Resort
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina |
| 6. |
Kiawah
Island Golf Resort
Kiawah Island, South Carolina |
| 7. |
Sea
Pines Resort
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina |
| 8. |
The
Boulders Resort & Golden Door Spa
Carefree, Arizona |
| 9. |
Tops'l
Beach & Racquet Resort
Destin, Florida |
| 10. |
Wintergreen
Resort
Wintergreen, Virginia |
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TOP 5 TENNIS CAMPS |
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San Diego – Tennis For All Seasons
By Roger Cox
 During
the five days I spent in San Diego this past June, the daytime
high stayed between 71° to 75° F. Naturally, I was
thrilled with the ideal tennis temperatures, but the locals
were distraught. Accustomed to a temperate climate of year-round
sunshine, San Diegans were suffering through “June gloom,”
during which what they call “marine air” and the
rest of us refer to as “haze and cloud cover”
was hovering along the county’s 70 miles of coastline.
If you’re accustomed to nearly perfect weather, I suppose
you can get cranky about any lapse from the ideal. After all,
residents and vacationers alike are drawn to this southern
California city, just north of Mexico, for its utopian climate.
Average high temperatures range from 65°F. in January
to 78°F. in August. Annual rainfall measures less than
10 inches, with most precipitation accumulating November through
March (which paradoxically are also the sunniest months).
The option of playing tennis outdoors any month of the year
helps explain why the sport has long had a high profile in
San Diego.
Morley Field in Balboa Park is renowned as a haven for avid
players. Its sunken stadium court was named for San Diego’s
most famous tennis player: Maureen Connolly Brinker, who was
the first woman to win all four Grand Slam events in the same
year. Moreover, the Morley Field complex of 25 hard courts
is one of the liveliest and most welcoming public facilities
in the country. On several occasions, I’ve simply shown
up without identifying my profession, asked about playing,
and invariably found a pickup game with a local player. It’s
just that kind of club. The area’s resorts also make
playing the game even easier.
Connolly was among the Who’s Who of Tennis Greats who
showed up to play on the hard courts at the La Jolla Beach
& Tennis Club. This resort traces its tennis history to
1935, and since then a lengthy list of legends—Bill
Tilden, Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe among them—has
competed at the 14-acre property, drawn by the club’s
unabashed enthusiasm for the game and its beachfront location.
The day I arrived, the hard-serving former Top 10 pro Roscoe
Tanner had dropped by and was engaged in a game of pickup
doubles with William Kellogg, great-grandson of the founder
of the resort, and two club members.
Having the beach barely more than an errant lob from the tennis
courts is undeniably one of the elements that draws guests
back year after year, often to the same unit and often to
renew friendships from previous visits. Over the last several
years, the Kellogg family has renovated guest rooms and expanded
the fitness center, so the club has never been more appealing.
Court time is free, as are attentive game-matching services.
Head pro William E. “Bill” Bond, who ranked in
the Top 10 in the United States in singles and as high as
No. 2 in doubles, has been a fixture at the club since 1971
and is available for private lessons.
 In
short, the facility has everything you’d expect in a
well-run tennis club and a few things you might not, including
a lap pool in a courtyard; a 9-hole pitch-and-putt golf course
(“We even let little kids play,” says Kellogg);
and the Marine Room, a restaurant that gets stellar ratings
from locals both for its inventive cuisine (think hazelnut-crusted
Hudson Valley foie gras or lobster in a citrusy ponzu sauce)
and its unusual location, protruding so far into the beach
that waves sometimes crash against its foundation.
On the day I arrived to the area, I detoured to see Mission
and Pacific Beaches and joined the crowd of sun worshippers,
surfers, and inline skaters who are attracted to the long
stretches of sand and the three-mile boardwalk that connects
them. The restaurants, bars, boutiques, surf shops and tattoo
parlors keep the beaches lively day and night. This is great
if lots of activity is what you’re looking for.
Personally, I prefer the less frenzied Coronado Beach on Coronado
Island, which was named one of the top 10 in the country this
year by Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, a.k.a. “Dr. Beach.”
It’s worth a visit if only to see the extravagantly
gabled and turreted Hotel del Coronado, which you may remember
from the film Some Like It Hot, starring Tony Curtis, Jack
Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.
There’s a beach to satisfy most anyone—even seals,
which so liked one protected patch of sand in La Jolla that
they decided to take it over, much to the consternation of
local residents who used to take their kids there. Of course,
people already have an abundance of opportunities to see wildlife
up close and personal.
The county has two internationally known showcases for exotic
wild animals: San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park, where
you can take a monorail through a savannah-like setting and
see hundreds of species of exotic animals in quasi-natural
settings, and the fabled San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park. What’s
so fabulous about this zoo—apart from the sheer numbers
of endangered species, including the giant panda cub Mei Sheng
and his parents—is the animals’ enclosures that
mimic their natural habitat, from a plunge pool for the polar
bears to a walk-in aviary rain forest for the birdlife. You
actually forget you’re in San Diego.
LEGOLAND® California in Carls-bad causes similarly pleasant
disorientation, making you feel like you’re in a cartoon.
Everything within this attraction seems to have been constructed
with the popular LEGO plastic blocks, to the delight of 2-
to 12-year-olds and their parents, who are the target market
for this theme park. I especially enjoyed Miniland, where
there were small-scale re-creations of numerous U.S. cities,
including a cross-section of New York City’s Grand Central
Station that showed the upper-level tennis court few people
know exists.
 Balboa
Park’s 1,200 acres encompass not only the zoo and Morley
Field, but also a collection of architecturally ornate Spanish-Colonial-inspired
buildings constructed for the Panama-California Exposition
in 1915–1916. Together they house 19 museums, among
them the San Diego Hall of Champions, which has a small display
of tennis memorabilia such as Maureen Connolly Brinker’s
tennis dress and signature wooden racket. Also, there are
free concerts on the mammoth organ at Spreckles Organ Pavilion,
a puppet theater for kids, a carousel, and much more.
Such attractions make San Diego County as popular with families
as it is with tennis players. The reputation for family friendliness
extends to the resorts, including those better known for other
amenities. A case in point is La Costa Resort & Spa in
Carlsbad, not far from LEGOLAND.
La Costa first attracted international recognition for its
spa and then later became the home of the WTA’s Acura
Tennis Classic, one of the lead-up events to the US Open.
Lately, the resort has been in the throes of a $140-million
renovation so extensive that I didn’t recognize the
place. Although the 19-court tennis complex itself, with its
sunken stadium and four red-clay courts, is substantially
the same, the grass courts are history and so is the original
1960s spa, replaced by a dramatic white-stucco Spanish Colonial
hacienda whose courtyard holds a small swimming pool, Jacuzzi
and cafe.
The spa stands at the end of a plaza bordered by shops, a
new restaurant and the Chopra Center for mind/body healing.
There is a village feel to the core of the resort, which sports
a much spiffier look. The old shingle siding is mostly gone,
replaced by white stucco, wrought iron and red barrel tile.
The resort owners added an 8,000-square-foot Athletic Club
overlooking the refurbished golf course. Meanwhile, tennis
remains a priority.
“We’re a turnkey operation,” says director
Lynn Lewis, a former UCLA All-American with wins over Gabriela
Sabatini and Mercedes Paz. “We can take care of you
and your children at any level, and we have some of the few
clay courts in San Diego.” What’s more, the West
Coast Tennis Academy is based at the resort and offers year-round
junior programs spanning toddlers to college students.
Four Seasons Resort Aviara, a posh 329-room hotel, is perched
on a hill amid million-dollar homes overlooking the Batiquitos
Lagoon wildlife preserve and the Pacific Ocean beyond. It
wraps around a pair of swimming pools, terraced one above
the other (the lower one is adults only, with underwater music
piped in) to make the most of that view. Just inside is an
elegant spa and modest but well-equipped fitness center. Down
below all this stretch the fairways of the 18-hole golf course
designed by Arnold Palmer and a handsomely landscaped complex
of six tennis courts, two of them Har-Tru, next to a sand
volleyball court and a kids’ playground.
Steve Halverson, a 27-year veteran of Peter Burwash International,
brought an extensive teaching and coaching background to Aviara
when he arrived to help open the tennis complex. As a tennis
player you get the kind of personal attention you expect of
Four Seasons, including guaranteed game matching. Also, children
can look forward to junior excellence programs and tennis
for tots.
In fact, “kid friendliness” pervades the resort.
Its Kids For All Seasons program starts in a playroom filled
with books, games, arts and crafts supplies, and computers
and ventures outdoors with walks to Batiquitos Lagoon to learn
about endangered species followed by kite flying, soccer,
scavenger hunts and more. All five restaurants have children’s
menus. Teens, meanwhile, can gather in the game room for pool,
ping-pong, board games or movies on the plasma screen television.
I didn’t see any children on my latest visit to Rancho
Valencia Resort in the hills behind the Del Mar Race Track.
Nevertheless, there is an on-going tennis program for members’
kids that readily accommodates junior guests, making it easy
to bring your children if you’re so inclined. The resort
will even custom-design complete family programs, if that’s
what you need.
This winsome 52-suite Relais & Chateaux property celebrated
its 15th anniversary this past June. The suites—none
smaller than 850 square feet—spread along a hillside
above a terraced complex of 18 hard courts, a huge facility
for this size property. No tennis resort I’ve visited
anywhere can match the sheer physical pleasure of its accommodations.
Every room has a fireplace, oversize bath, and a broad private
terrace, where many guests enjoy massages (therapists routinely
provide treatments in the rooms). In addition to a newspaper,
orange juice is delivered outside each morning, supplementing
any coffee made in the room. The newest Grove Suites have
950 square feet, steam showers, outdoor Jacuzzis, plasma screen
televisions and such luxurious appointments that I almost
regretted having to walk outside, even if it was to play tennis.
And Rancho Valencia does tennis extremely well, ranking No.
1 in the world on my recent Tennis Resorts online survey (see
below). The sport is, after all, the focal point of the resort—though
it will get some competition later this year when a new spa
and fitness center opens. The resort offers hard-core players
a three-hour morning clinic that often turns into a private
or semi-private session, depending on how many other players
of the same skill level sign up. Others can opt for shorter
clinics, round robins and men’s or ladies’ days.
Conscientious game matching is a given.
After a match on a Friday afternoon you may find yourself,
as I did, sitting on the terrace with a group of members,
drinking margaritas and talking about up-and-coming players.
From there it’s a few steps to the restaurant, where
chef Steve Sumner’s menu blends Asian influences with
the freshest possible products to create dishes such as crispy
ahi tuna rolls, applewood fired Lido veal chops or Magret
duck breast with roasted tri-color potatoes. People come from
all over the county to dine here. Unfortunately for them,
many have to then drive home. I, on the other hand, was just
a short walk from that room I was so sorry to leave.
And I was so sorry to leave San Diego. On the day I flew out,
the weather forecast was for an end to the “June gloom.”
To learn whether the prediction was correct, I telephoned
a friend who lives there. “Oh, yes,” was the response.
“July 1 was beautiful.” |
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